← Mondays with Matt
Mondays with Matt
#4: Essential Tools for Productivity & Quality of Life
01:14:19
Learn the books and podcasts, gadgets and tools, tips and hacks, and more that help Matt and Chris with productivity and generally enjoying life and work.
Loading summary
Transcript172 lines
- [00:02]
A
You're listening to the build you'd business podcast, powered by Turnkey Coach, where we help business owners find freedom over fear. I'm Matt Reynolds, and I'm his brother, Chris Reynolds.
- [00:12]
B
Join us as we help build your business and move from fear to freedom together. You're listening to the build your business podcast. I'm your host, Matt Reynolds. My brother, Chris Reynolds, co host. Welcome to the show, brother.
- [00:35]
A
Yo, how's it going?
- [00:36]
B
Hey, Happy Thanksgiving.
- [00:38]
A
Happy Thanksgiving to you. It's coming quick.
- [00:41]
B
Well, yes. By the time people listen to this, it will have been yesterday.
- [00:45]
A
Oh, true.
- [00:46]
B
Yep. And so it is Thanksgiving week for us, which means it's a busy week. As a side note, typically I will not give a caveat on my performance, but I woke up horrifically ill yesterday morning, and I never get sick. I mean, when I say I maybe get sick once a year, if that. I woke up yesterday with a horrible sore throat, fever, body aches, chills, sinus. I was like, this is awful.
- [01:13]
A
That's the worst, man.
- [01:15]
B
Yeah. Essentially couldn't do. It was so bad. I mean, I work through colds and I work through sickness, and if I got stomach stuff, I can definitely work through it because I've had stomach stuff my whole life. But this was one of those levels of sick that I got almost nothing done yesterday, only the bare minimum, which means I have a lot to do today. It's the Tuesday before Thanksgiving when we're recording this. You guys are hearing this on Black Friday, which I generally hate the holiday of Black Friday, as a matter of fact, I hate the fact that it's become so materialistic that it has moved to Thanksgiving. At lunchtime, when everyone should be spending time with their families, all the stores start opening up. I hate that. So I do want to give a caveat. One, I'm a little ill. You're going to have to carry the podcast today. But two, I do all my Thanksgiving shopping at home. I assume you do, too.
- [02:06]
A
Oh, yeah. For years. Well, before online shopping was popular, I was already just online shopping.
- [02:13]
B
Yeah, I'm not going to the stores. And not only that, again, you're in Boston, I'm in Springfield. And it's been a while since you've been here during the holiday season. You came home last Christmas, but traffic in this town of 200,000 people, I don't know what it's like. We get another million people into the city, all of a sudden.
- [02:34]
A
All the surrounding areas, I suspect. Yeah.
- [02:36]
B
And so the stores are not fun, but the traffic is even worse. And you Know what's awesome? Home delivery. And so we're actually going to do a pretty quick episode today about some of our favorite things. Like these are a few of my favorite things. And we're only going to be brand specific where there are brands that we recognize, like, we really, really, truly love. But I also want to let everyone know that we are not sponsored by any of the people that we are going to, any of the companies or brands or types of things that we're going to promote today. And we're going to focus on the things that make our lives better, that make us more productive, that make us better in business. Like, what are those things that, that we have utilized over the years that were like, this was worth the investment. And some of those may literally be like your alcohol swabs on your nose, which are a box is 97 cents. And some of them may be like an eight sleep, which we'll talk about, which might be $4,000 and everything in between. We'll dive right in. I've kind of broken this up by categories. So because this is the build your business podcast, let's start with productivity and time savers. Like the stuff that you do or that I do, that we've spent some money on. Big, small, whatever. As you're thinking about your Black Friday holiday purchases, as you're thinking about what to ask for, it's interesting. I don't know if you're like me. You probably are my family, especially Rachel's family, who buys gifts. We're going to Mexico here in a couple weeks. That's Christmas. Years ago, we were like, we're not buying more Barbies for the girls.
- [04:10]
A
Yeah.
- [04:10]
B
Who are now too old for Barbies. But we're just not going to spend money on toys. We're going to spend money on experiences. And so that's kind of what we do as a family. But grandma, grandpa, aunts and uncles, they still want to buy gifts. My mother and father in law are like, matt, what do you want? I'm like, whatever I want. I just die by. I don't know. Donate it to a great charity, I guess. I don't know what to say. So, okay, so let's start with productivity and time saver. So I know for both of us, noise canceling headphones are huge. I use them all the time. I will tell you the brand that I use. I'll tell you what I love about them and what I don't love about them. First off, I think I have a weird ear hole. Maybe it's not the only weird hole in my body. But definitely my ear holes are weird. And the AirPod Pros do not fit my ears. They fall out of my ears. They're completely uncomfortable. I think the AirPod Pros, from what I hear from the rest of my family who use them, they love them. I use the Jabra Elites, which I think is the seven. Now I have purchased them probably 25 times because I've left them on airplanes 24 times. But they have an excellent noise canceling headphone. I mean it is as good a noise canceling as I have ever found. The reason I originally bought them was because they have two microphones in each headpiece and the sound quality is supposed to be excellent when you speak on them. They are not. When I talk on the phone, 50% of the time, people say you're kind of muffled. So they work fantastic as noise canceling headphones. But I would say they are not wonderful for really good conversations or important business conversations. For headphones, what do you use for your noise canceling headphones?
- [06:01]
A
I use the over ear headphones.
- [06:04]
B
Sony also good by the way, outranked Bose, outranked Sony for many, many years. And then the last couple years the Sony over earphones, I have those same ones.
- [06:14]
A
Yep.
- [06:15]
B
Now that is a noise canceling headphone.
- [06:18]
A
The reason that I got into noise canceling headphones in the first place was, I mean, you remember how sound sensitive dad was?
- [06:25]
B
Yes.
- [06:26]
A
Like I got that from dad. Like I just can't, I can't focus on anything when there's sound going on all over the place.
- [06:34]
B
Same.
- [06:34]
A
And so I, you know, dad tried to silence the world. My goal was just to instead put noise canceling headphones on. And so, you know, when you think about like the amount of productivity that you can get, if you can get into that deep work zone. For me, 99% of that is getting just as deep in my head as I can possibly get. And that means blocking out the outside world. So correct those over ear headphones, everything's gone. And if I put on, you know, either like ambient music of some kind or just like ambient sound, like white noise or something, everything is literally gone. And I can just focus on whatever I need to focus on. I love them.
- [07:12]
B
Do you have any drawbacks? Because I have one major drawback for me for the over the ear headphones that you're using. Yeah.
- [07:18]
A
So it, it kind of presses against my ears a little bit. After some length of time, my ears which kind of pop out a little bit, they start hurting a little. The Other one that's kind of weird is just that it, you know, this is hilarious probably, but it, like, it affects my hair situation. I gotta like deal with the hair. So that's kind of annoying.
- [07:37]
B
Not an issue for me. If you're watching this on YouTube, they're a little hot for me, okay? And so as someone who has always run hot and, you know, 270 pounds, but even when I was 3, mom has pictures of me just sweating profusely. The over the ear headphones are very hot. So I mean, I can put them on for an hour, half an hour, but eventually I'm just like, I gotta get these off. Because I'm just. Same thing. They're pushing on my ears and they're hot. And so I like the earbuds that are. And it's wild if you, you know, I'm sure you've probably used these too. You hit the button that doesn't have the noise canceling on and you're just listening to like normal stuff. And you can even, you know, listen to somebody talk to you. You can have a conversation. And then when you hit that button and I don't know what it does to turn that frequency off in your ears, which is like, oh, this is incredible.
- [08:25]
A
It's wonderful.
- [08:25]
B
So that's what I use on airplanes. That's what I use in the car when we're on a road trip. Maybe I'm listening to a podcast or an audible and I'm driving. Maybe I'm sitting in the passenger seat, my wife's driving and it just blocks out the noise of the kids and they're playing the wicked soundtrack and whatever. So that's a great place to start. Another one that we deal with a lot, which should be a no brainer for those of you that work in an online space is a fast computer and fast Internet. And I want to be careful the way I say this, because this is actually a little bit of a sensitive point for me. We have people who shall remain nameless, who work for our company, who will try to push their computer, like, oh, it's a 6, 7, 8, 10 year old computer. Your software should support that. And I'm like, you're making six figures a year, spend $1,000 on a MacBook. It's not that big of a deal. And I remember those days in college, you and I both using old school, late 90s, early 2000s Dells or the Chromebook, which, by the way, a brand new Chromebook. If you buy a brand new Chromebook every year, you're probably fine. They're 200, $300. They don't cost that much. I'm a MacBook guy. I buy a MacBook about every two and a half to three years. My job is to work entirely on this computer, which means I want to have the best computer I can possibly have. And then second is fiber Internet or in rural areas like where the cabin is Starlink. And at this point they have the Starlink mini, they're going to integrate it to the phones. It's about to be on the airplanes. It completely changed my ability to work down at the rural cabin when I went from the satellite Internet, the old school satellite Internet to the Starlink Internet. Fast Internet, fast computer, probably four X's. My efficiency.
- [10:24]
A
Well, and I think the principle of this is fairly simple, right? Look at those things you use every day. Every single day, whatever those things are, those are the right things to spend money on, right? So like if you're on your computer all day, every day and you're having issues because your computer's not fast enough or you're having issues because your Internet's not fast enough, spend the money to do the upgrade because the value of your time is way, way higher than what you think it is. And so it's the right thing to do for sure. And I do the same thing. I replace my computer. I get a new MacBook every. I probably get a new MacBook every two years. But I mean I'm a hardcore engineer. So like I need. I literally have the newest Mac M4 sitting here that just came in yesterday and I set it up.
- [11:10]
B
It's great.
- [11:10]
A
But yeah, like get a great computer. Get.
- [11:12]
B
By the way, do you keep your old MacBooks?
- [11:15]
A
Yes.
- [11:16]
B
So I think you know this, but the MacBook that I built Strong gym on and what is now Barbell Logic, Reynolds Strong originally I actually shadow boxed it and it's hanging in my office. It's all beat up and there's like dents on it and stuff. It's like that's the computer that built the businesses that I currently run. And so yeah, so there's like, what are they worth by the time they're done? A hundred bucks. Couple hundred bucks. I'm not going to sell them on ebay. There's actually this nostalgia piece to it. I spent thousands of hours on that computer. But I do the same thing as you. Once the computer starts to slow down, it's time for a new one. Here we go.
- [11:56]
A
Time for an upgrade.
- [11:57]
B
All right, so the other thing is to hire. This is really speaking more to your business, but also to probably Barbalogic, is to hire professionals where you can. We did this episode, I think it was episode two, thinking about the value you get over what the total price is. Because often when you hire great professionals. And by the way, I could actually, I've got an area to talk about with like home work. Like this could be a $300 an hour developer or the guy that mows your lawn.
- [12:29]
A
Yeah.
- [12:29]
B
Or your housekeeper that cleans your floors and baseboards. Like, we keep a clean house, you keep a clean house. But I really don't want to. We don't want to clean my floors and baseboards. No, we hire professionals to do those things to save us time where necessary. And this is. I hope that most of the people are listening to this. There is some transition that occurred from, I think the boomer generation to Gen X to the millennials where our parents did everything. Our dad changed the oil in the car. I know how to change oil in the car. Dad taught me how to change oil. I haven't changed oil in the car in 30 years because changing oil in the car is 40 bucks.
- [13:13]
A
I think it was a point of pride for them. I really do. Knowing how to do all the things and being self sufficient, I think was a deep point of pride. I think it's. It just gets lost in the total amount of things that you really should do. I even see this, and I saw this in some of the boomer executives that are out there, that I had one that was a boss when I was very, very young at a very, very early job that I got in 7 o'clock in the morning to open this place up and the CEO is out shoveling the driveway with snow. And it was one of these things where it was like, look, I'm servant leadership. Look how awesome I am. And I'm thinking to myself, that's a.
- [13:52]
B
Waste of your time. That's right.
- [13:54]
A
20 bucks to a college kid is what that is. And it is a giant waste of time. And so I think there's an important factor here which is just you need to utilize the resources that will save you the most time and make you the most efficient and also produce the best value for you. I literally, I can do everything in existence around the idea of like, websites, web applications, all that kind of stuff. I hired someone last week to start a new website for us, despite the fact that I know how to build websites. But what I'm not good at is I'm not a good designer. I am not that's not my skill set. I am a good, you know, I'm a good software engineer. I'm a, I'm good high level thinker and executive, those kinds of things. It just doesn't make sense for me to spend time trying to figure out how to design a website. Right? So I use professionals when I want to get that stuff done. I do the same thing to help me on a lot of the marketing work that we do. I use a marketing firm to help us and I'm very careful about who I pick, making sure I get the right one. But I think at the end of the day, using really, really good professionals in your industry, in your life is just, it's a game changer.
- [15:00]
B
Well, and it, there's two ends of the spectrum. There is the hire the professional. That's much better, much faster, much more efficient and higher value than you could ever be at that job. And there's the other end of the spectrum, which is also you shouldn't be mowing your lawn and shoveling your snow and trimming your trees and cutting your wood for the fire. Like I got a fireplace, it's 24 degrees here right now, so there's a fire going on. I didn't cut the wood. So it actually works on both ends of the spectrum. The $300 an hour job and the $12 an hour job. I don't put gas in my car. I pay someone to put gas and maybe that's a teenage daughter, maybe that's our sister, maybe that's. But I don't have time to put gas in my car or my truck. I drive a truck because grownups drive trucks anyway. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to wash my truck. Someone else is going to wash my truck and I'm going to pay for it and it's fine. But that's a low wage, low skill, cleaning floors, clean baseboards and then there's all the way to high skill of engineers that you hire.
- [16:06]
A
You do this thing so well. I've been so impressed with the way that you do this with your kids. And I actually think it's such a good opportunity for those of you that have kids that are listening. Some of that low end work that you just think about, like, hey, I don't, you know, this is not something I enjoy doing and I don't want to spend my time doing this. Pay your kids to do this stuff, like hire them, like teach them to be able to do those kinds of activities. Because at the end of the day. It's a good opportunity for them and it saves you a pile of time. I think it's fantastic.
- [16:35]
B
That's probably a great future episode for us is just some of the how we parent without. And I realize that that's sometimes a polarizing sort of thing. But you know, for me we don't. We never paid our kids to like keep their rooms clean. That's. That's expected, right? Yeah. But all those extra jobs like going and putting fertilizer on the yard, I'll pay you for that. Yeah, or whatever the thing is. And so last one on and there's lots. Probably all of these could fall under productivity and time savers. The last one is really leveraging AI. I want to let you speak to. Because AI has changed the world so dramatically in the last year. Things like reflect AI notes, ChatGPT. We use fireflies. I think you guys do too. So fireflies, an AI, basically it transcribes an entire meeting. Like it transcribes what we're doing right now. It will summarize it and then email it to you and you have an entire transcripted. It's not a perfect. You can get a word for word transcription. It's actually better because if it's a word for word transcription, it's going to take you 45 minutes to read it and you can say that, send you a summary and then you can actually plug it right back into another AI and be like, summarize this down to 500 words.
- [17:44]
A
Yeah.
- [17:45]
B
And it'll summarize the entire meeting to however many words you want. And so how are you leveraging those things to save time?
- [17:51]
A
I mean, I use AI all day, every day in every possible way that I can do it. I stay on top of every tool that's being released, which is, it's constantly happening right now. So like literally it's almost a full time job just to keep up with what, what all is going on. But it's, it's all very incredible. We live in, living in the middle of the AI revolution. So it's the right time to focus on this. I'm a productivity guy. I love all the productivity tools. You can go too far down this road, spend too much time doing productivity and not getting work done. So you got to be careful about that. It's a thing I have to think. But one of the tools that I've started using recently is a note taker called Reflect AI and it is absolutely incredible. I mean you can keep sort of a constant log of your day you can keep notes around just various things that you're taking notes about, let's say meetings or whatever. And you can actually highlight those notes inside of your note taker. And after you highlight them, you can send the notes to any of the AI LLM engines and have it do stuff for you. So you can literally just highlight the notes and say summarize this or turn this into a long form blog post that you can do. Like, it's crazy. It's really, really impressive.
- [19:01]
B
And so does it take both written notes? Like it. Like if you write notes, it can take that and put it into its algorithm, into its LLM as well as spoken. So could it listen to a meeting on Zoom or something and do both and then transcribe or summarize or.
- [19:19]
A
Yeah, it could. I think the way that I use it right now is that I will literally take the Fireflies output and I would put that reflect. In my opinion, Fireflies is the best one so far for the meeting note taking.
- [19:32]
B
It's pretty cheap, right? Again. Oh, it's super interesting. I've got stories about this. I'll tell about you later. When you first became successful and you didn't know what anything cost. But I don't think Fireflies is very expensive. And so it does a great. Every time we do a Zoom call, Fireflies is listening and then they provide a summary of that.
- [19:52]
A
I've had clients that have said, hey, this is like super awesome just to know that I can be on a meeting with you and you're going to send me the full, you know, transcript. And then of course that's a viral way for them to grow too, for Fireflies to grow, which is great.
- [20:04]
B
It's great because people don't have to take notes during the meeting, right? It's like you have a stenographer who's taking notes during the meeting. So you can actually just interact with humans and not take the notes. I'd be interested for you to try this because you don't have quite. You've put out a ton of content recently, but you don't have a decade of content like I do. I'll take the Fireflies notes, put it in ChatGPT4 or whatever. Is it 4.0? Is that the newest one? Whatever. The newest one is 4.0. And I'll say put this in Matt Reynolds voice and because I have so much stuff on the Internet and so many podcasts, it will take those summarized notes which are sort of computerized, and it'll put it in my voice and Then I'm like, that does sound exactly like what I would say. Okay, and maybe I have to change three words. That's it, like and that's over.
- [20:55]
A
Let's talk about how to do that now with two different tools. So I want to describe the way that I use ChatGPT and the way that I use Claude and why I use one versus the other because I think it is an important thing. So in the case of claude, specifically.
- [21:11]
B
So explain really fast, explain the difference between the two from a 50,000 foot view.
- [21:16]
A
50,000 foot view. Both of these are tools companies. ChatGPT is owned by OpenAI, Claude is owned by Anthropic. And those are sort of the two emerging technologies around, you know, the way.
- [21:31]
B
Language model, the ll large language model.
- [21:33]
A
The way that you chat with a large language model and work with a large language model. So in claude, which is the Anthropic tool, you can create a project and upload documents, images, transcripts, whatever to the project so that the project knows all about your voice. These are all these things that I've done in the past. Here's my meetings, here's my blah, blah. This is all this stuff. And it can know other things too. Like it can, in the case that you want it to do something like explain complex code to you. You can upload the code into the project and then have a conversation with the code or have a conversation, have it explain sections of the code, have it slowly build up knowledge base over time. CLAUDE is unbelievably impressive with what it's capable of doing. And those things that you upload are called artifacts inside of claude, you can actually ask it to build its own artifacts based on the artifacts that are there. So you can do some really, really interesting stuff with Claude. That is a very useful tool. ChatGPT I use very frequently for I like the web search capability. I like the way that the 4O model gives me the ability to ask questions that I'm going to get like a really good general response to. The newest models, which are O1 preview and 01 preview mini, those are the reflection models, which means that those models are built to reflect on their answers. So they are actually the first set of models where they sort of think a little bit. And I have noticed an absolutely stellar performance on big complex things that you're asking it to do where it's trying to break down problems into large. Like you could say, I want to build a plan, I want to build a plan for the next month. And here's a ton of information about that. And so you give it all this background inside of the, inside of the prompt and it will sit there and chew on it. And what it comes back with is incredible.
- [23:33]
B
Is a distilled, clear, concise plan to move forward with it.
- [23:38]
A
Yeah, absolutely.
- [23:38]
B
So here, here's what I would say. So let me give you an example of what we're playing with right now. Beta testing at Barbell Logic. But by the way, because I can't do a podcast without a sales pitch right now, it's 50% off for three months. Your first three months. There's no contract at Barbalogic. You can go to barbalogic.com it'll come up. It's. I think it's barbalogic.com Black Friday, but you can just go to the main website. One of the things we do, we give video feedback. As you know, you're one of my clients. Spoken video feedback to our clients. And there's a video. So you have like a three minute video every day that you can look at. You hear my voice, you see your squats. You hear me break it down. What we're now playing with is taking that transcript of the breakdown and saying give the client the three most important bullet point technique changes they need to make for the next time they do this lift. So when you do your Hatfield squats or your squats or whatever.
- [24:33]
A
Yep.
- [24:33]
B
It then not only you don't have to go back and watch a three minute video. You get three bullet points.
- [24:38]
A
Yep.
- [24:38]
B
Okay. So like I watch you do your half heel squats this morning and in the bottom you kind of rounded your upper back just a little bit. You don't have to go back and rewatch that video a week from now. You already have the bullet points that will give you that. And so think about as you communicate to people, whether that is written, spoken video, whatever. Those tools are now in place for extremely cheap. Either free, $10 a month, $20. I think OpenAI for the full, like for the 4.0 for the Pro is 20 bucks a month. And that's the most expensive one that's out there I think right now is you can convert all of those things to a summarized version of what you communicated. Give the client or give the, you know, we had this meeting, you know, these many bullet points or 500 words or 200 words. We do weekly reports every week for the entire company that if I took everyone's narrative, which is often seven paragraphs a piece in five different sections of the company, and I have it Just summarize it down to 200 words. And now I have a thousand words total. And I can even take that and say, now summarize those thousand words down to 150 words for a company overview. As an opening paragraph of like, this is what we're doing and that takes zero time. I wrote, I hesitate to say this in case he listens. And if you do listen, I apologize. I wrote a letter of recommendation for a coach who's applying to get his master's in college and need an lor. And that takes a while to write. And so I went to ChatGPT 4.0 and I said, here's this guy's name, here's what he's great at. He's been here for this long. Write me a letter of recommendation for him. And I want it to be two paragraphs long, 350 words. It spit it out in two seconds. And then I took it and said, now take that and put it in Matt Reynolds voice. I could probably could have done that in the original prompt even. And it did it. And I was like, that's me. And I copied and pasted it in and we got a lor. It took two minutes.
- [26:34]
A
That level of automation within your life is so valuable. I've had people say, like, look, OpenAI's ChatGPT is 20 bucks a month. I think Claude is actually also 20 bucks a month. And I pay for both of those. I am fascinated by the personality that says, I know I would get all this value from this, but I just can't make myself pay $20 a month for it. That is crazy.
- [26:58]
B
Yeah, it's the same thing as a person who won't spend money. Like, I've got people who've worked for me who have made hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last seven or eight years and they won't pull the trigger on a thousand dollar computer.
- [27:10]
A
Right.
- [27:11]
B
Or bump your Internet up and it's 40 more bucks a month. Like that's in that one letter of recommendation. It saved me the $20, no question. The very first time.
- [27:24]
A
It is such a game changer. I highly recommend that you at least pick a tool and go ahead and do the deep dive. It's worth the money. It's many times over worth the money. I say these guys deliver probably at least 10x the value that they provide. So very much worth it.
- [27:39]
B
Awesome. Okay, let's rapid fire. So the next section we have on learning. So I know for us, we are constant students of what we're doing, learning as much as we can, taking every spare moment that we have and trying to learn. We both said YouTube Premium for me is a no brainer. YouTube without Premium has all the commercials. So same thing. So for I don't even know what it costs, but it's not very much. Maybe it's $20 a month. I don't, I don't even know.
- [28:04]
A
I just bought a family plan. There's a family plan if you have kids that do it too. And I think it's maybe $40 a month, but all of your kids get their own version. And that's nice for me because my kids watch things that screw up my suggestions.
- [28:19]
B
We do the exact same thing. I get on there and I'm like, who's been on my YouTube thing? So the other thing that I use, so I USE first off, YouTube is the, that's the number one search engine in the world right now over Google. Now it's probably going to be replaced by a chatgpt of some point or Google is going to figure out how to integrate their AI into YouTube. Because YouTube, when I'm looking for how to do a thing like Thanksgiving, you know, how long do I run the turkey now make it a rib roast for how do I do the rib roast? Like it's YouTube I'm going to, not Google, right?
- [28:52]
A
Yep, same.
- [28:53]
B
And so YouTube Premium, totally worth it. The other thing that I use every day is the combo of Audible and Kindle and it's because they link. And so if I find a book that's valuable to me and we'll talk about books here in just a second, I can listen to the book anytime I want to. If I'm driving down the road, if I'm at the grocery store, which is rare because I mostly get groceries delivered, but wherever I am, I can listen to the audible. And then when I'm laying in bed and I open up the Kindle, it takes me right to the point that the audible left off. And so the combo. And by the way, if it's a really good book, I buy it in all three. I buy the hardback or paperback version and the Kindle and the Audible. So if it's a book that I'm like, I need to be able to actually highlight dog ear underline, I'll do that as well. But that to me, that is such a cheap value. And then Kindle Unlimited is very cheap and you can often have, I don't know what it is, five or 10 books at a time. You just pay the monthly fee and then when you're done with that book, you just kind of return it like a library. And then you can add another book to your Kindle library that's also then attached to the Audible book.
- [30:01]
A
Yeah, it's incredible. I feel like for speed, a lot of times what'll happen is I'll be listening to a podcast or something and someone will come on and they'll mention a book or they are the author of a book and I want to get it now because I'm like, usually I'm walking through the airport, I'm about to get on an airplane and I'm like, I'm not going to find the physical book, but I want to listen to this thing. Thing while I'm on this next plane. And so I do the same thing. I have the audible Kindle combo. And then you know, when a book hits hard enough and I'm like, you know, there's really good visual context in this, which you can usually download that stuff from Audible. Audible will be like, hey, there's a supplement. Download it here. Which is nice. But in most cases I will still get the physical book.
- [30:43]
B
Yeah. Because it's $11.
- [30:46]
A
Yeah. If I have all three versions of the book, that book freaking killed it for me.
- [30:51]
B
And like it's the best. Let's talk about podcasts. So I know we're both big podcast listeners. Build your business Podcast hopefully is becoming one of those of you who are listening one of your favorite podcasts. My favorite podcasts of the year and really probably even the past couple years. I love the Founders podcast with David Senra. If you haven't heard that and you're a business owner, that is an absolute non negotiable to me of something you should be listening to. This guy reads every autobiography of every successful business owner person. Even people like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. They don't actually have to be a billion dollar business owner. And distills the entire biography, which sometimes you. And I read a lot of these biographies. As a matter of fact, that's how I find the biographies I end up reading. Like, oh man, I need to read Titan on Rockefeller. Even though. And it's a thousand pages long. But Cinrabull distill it down to a one hour episode or a 40 minute episode. That guy has got. And by the way, he now has AI notes. I'm a founder's lifetime member, which I think was $500 for the lifetime. I get all his notes on every book he's ever read. The notes he goes back to and highlights so Founders Podcast is fantastic. I use that. That's my number one podcast. Do you have one that you.
- [32:10]
A
I mean, it's definitely the Founders podcast for sure. That podcast, in my mind, is the single greatest podcast for founders ever. And part of the reason why is it's just like chicken soup for the soul for founders. Like, you get to remember, like, if you are a founder and you're in the middle of the stress and chaos of that, you have these sources of information where you're like, you know what? I'm not the only one going through this. And. And sometimes when I feel like things are really tough, just go listen to the Dyson episode and just. And then. And then go back and tell me four Dyson episodes.
- [32:43]
B
But yes, the other thing that Cinera does so well is he's got great pattern recognition. So there are times where you know these business guys. Okay, so like the guy that started Costco was friends with Charlie Munger, and you can see a lot of overflow, but there's lots of times where the business owners did not know each other. And he still sees the pattern recognition. Yeah, he can make the connection and identifies the connection. And you're like, oh, light bulb, right. So Founders Podcast, my favorite. I listen all in every week, all in podcast, which has four guys on it that are. That are all tech guys. And they're kind of all over the place politically from. From what I would say uber right with David Sachs to what. What at least has been uber left with Jason Calacanis, who is the co host, plus Chamath and David Freeberg. And they're both kind of in the middle, like maybe middle right, middle left. And they just talk about the things of the day, so politics, news, but lots of tech and business stuff. I've learned so much about raising money, raising our series A, things like that. They started this podcast in Covid when the world was kind of shut down. I listen to them. That comes out typically every Saturday morning or late Friday night. I get up on Saturday morning. Saturday is the day that I mostly take off. I might work a couple hours in the morning and then I make a good cup of coffee and I watch all in podcasts. So that's another one that I absolutely love. And the other one that I really love is invest like the best, which is another one that is Founders is kind of maybe similar where you might pick and choose based on who the person is that's being interviewed. And they will interview people and same sort of thing. So the difference is that Senra is going to talk about a lot of founders from the past. Well he also does episodes on Elon Musk and Bezos and stuff. But a lot of guys from the past invest like the best. Is often talking to people who are here right now. And so the autobiography hasn't been written yet, will be written, but isn't written yet. So those are my big ones. I don't know if you have any other big podcasts that you love.
- [34:39]
A
The other one that I listen to is my first Million I like a lot. I think there's just an aspect of that one that is sort of like it's a very sort of off the cuff format. But the guys that run that podcast are very well connected to the tech world. Also investment stuff in general, but then also productivity and I don't know, there's just a lot of interesting stuff on there. I like that podcast quite a bit.
- [35:02]
B
And It's a great YouTube podcast to watch so that it's well produced. It's not just audio. You can certainly listen to it on audio. But the video is great. All right, let's talk about books. So books of the past year. I know for you actually I'll let you speak to both to Andrew Wilkinson's and founder brand book because I know those are probably the two biggest books that you've read this year.
- [35:21]
A
Right. So actually I was aware of Andrew Wilkinson from my Twitter time. I just time like he's got a big personality on Twitter. But I really got driven further from me in listening to that podcast my first million because those guys know him really well. So he's on the podcast regularly.
- [35:40]
B
I found out about him. So he owns a company called Tiny. I found out about him from the founders podcast and David Senra knows him really well as well. So there's some crossover there. So go ahead.
- [35:49]
A
So they had him on and I was just able to sort of listen to his own personal philosophy about the way that he did things. And as he described the process of building his own agency and then growing that design agency, which actually was the design agency that did the initial design for Slack. It grows into this large holding company eventually and sort of his own little mini Berkshire Hathaway. And if you listen to the to the founders podcast you'll a lot of times you'll hear ads for Tiny. They talk about it, you know, in the. In the early portion of the episode. And that's his company. So his book Never Enough just walks through all of the. It's the biography of how he became what he became and the story is really, really, really good. It's a very strong indicator of success. I think that you can just sort of see the way that he went from one thing to the next and slowly built upon his own knowledge and his own experience. If you're particularly interested in holding companies or the idea of building holding companies, it's a great book to just give you a sense of. Of what's possible in the world, but it's very, very, very good.
- [36:55]
B
The other thing I love about him, again, just even in the title, never Enough, is he struggles a lot with what many of us struggle with as founders, especially those of us who have businesses that have grown. He's like, if I just get to $3 million a year in annual recurring revenue, I will be happy. Everything will be fine. Only you're not. You're actually more anxious, you're more stressed.
- [37:20]
A
I can tell you with absolute confidence that that doesn't change. So as you make more money over time, as you do things like, I've had a very successful exit, the thing that you. The thing you eventually find out is that the thing that you really enjoyed was building something. And it's the building of the thing that ends up. You just sort of realize, like, I.
- [37:44]
B
You're not happier solving problems, building things, not cashing checks.
- [37:49]
A
No, it just doesn't do it. I mean, it'll last. You're happy for two weeks. It's crazy. It just doesn't last very long.
- [37:55]
B
You and I have. We've told a little bit of this story. I mean, we're poor Baptist preachers, kids, where. There is a time where I have been wildly stressed about keeping the electricity on in my own home. It's been a while, or paying the mortgage or whatever the thing is. But once you get to that point where you're just like, well, we can pay the electricity and we pay the mortgage and we buy the Christmas presents. We can go on the trip if we need to, and we're not worth $100 million. We're not Uber, uber wealthy. But we've got to the point that we're not struggling to pay the bills after that. The bigger the checks get and the bigger the income gets, the more people you have to manage and the bigger the problems become. And then you start to realize, oh, really? The thing that I'm doing is where I find joy is in building things and solving problems. Just like I was when I was a business with an employee of one, which was me. And now you're a business of 100 or 300 or 3,000 take like an Elon Musk. I still think the thing that makes that guy tick is solving problems. For sure.
- [38:56]
A
There's no question.
- [38:57]
B
He just wants to solve problems. That's what he wants to do. Right. And so founder, brand, really quick, we'll go over. David Gerhardt wrote that we talked a lot about this last week, which is that concept that people attach themselves to people, they relate to people, not to brands. And so if you want probably a deeper dive on that, you can listen to last week's episode where we talk about founder brand. That creation story of the founder is the creation story of the business. David Sinner will also say that the story of the father presents itself in the story of the son, which I think is also really interesting with a lot of these business guys. But that's an excellent book as well, for sure.
- [39:34]
A
Yeah, definitely. I think the one thing that I would say about that particular book is that it does a very good job of going into the details of how to utilize content specifically off of a podcast to go build all the other content that you'll build. And we did talk about that quite a bit in the last episode. So if you're interested, go back and listen to that one.
- [39:52]
B
The last couple, we'll just mention quickly. I know we're both big Hormozy fans. I've followed him for years. I got to meet him a couple weeks ago, I say a couple weeks, a couple months ago now, in Vegas. And he's written two books now and his book this year is $100 million leads. I think his first one was a $100 million offer. I think it was right. He and his wife Layla both put out a ton of high value content. Again, we didn't talk a lot about them last week, but they do the very thing we're talking about with content, they put out high value content for free. Hormozi's given out probably hundreds of thousands of this book for free because ultimately where he makes his money is acquiring businesses. He's similar to Wilkinson with Tiny. I mean, he's. He is basically a private equity firm at this point, a smaller one, but one that is like he's done the thing and grown the business and so he puts out tons of value. He's created himself. He and Layla both as experts in the field. But it certainly will help distill the things that we talked about last week about how to put out content that is valuable and could potentially go viral and how it actually leads to conversions and all those sorts of things. And then another one is Buy Back youk Time by Dan Martell, which is just exactly what we talked about in the opening of this podcast, which is that too many people don't take a few minutes to think about like if I can hire this thing out, I want to spend my money at this point, not on nicer cars and private jets. I want to buy back my time. So if I can spend the money on not cleaning the house or not doing the laundry or not mowing my lawn or not putting gas in my car or not having to hire a developer team of 10 to develop our software and I can hire your company to do it. That's what I'm buying back my time. And then my book that's coming out, undoing urgency on December 10th. So very soon. And you can get it on pre sale Amazon now. I quote that book pretty extensively, I think in chapter four and give him a lot of credit for that and kind of build off the things that he talks about.
- [41:52]
A
Yeah, it's a great book. A lot around the virtuous cycle of what happens when you can free up a little time. It gives you a little more opportunity to sort of snowball that into the next thing. To the next thing. To the next thing. It's a great view on how to ultimately get to the point where the business that you own is not. Doesn't own you. So it's very valuable. Also, I will add to this that the Undoing Urgency book. So I read the early copy of Undoing Urgency, your book, and that's actually you mentioning Dan Martell is why I bought Buy back your Time.
- [42:28]
B
Oh interesting.
- [42:29]
A
Because I was like, oh cool. Like I want to this book. That's it's also interesting. But your book does such a good job of going through these concepts and applying it obviously differently, but giving you a really good understanding of how to separate what you do out of the urgent, constant battle of, you know, chaos that you deal with in business and in life in general. So it just does. It does an excellent, excellent job of laying out that path.
- [42:56]
B
Thank you.
- [42:57]
A
So that book is. I have pre bought it already as well. It will be coming to me very soon and I'm looking forward to getting the physical copy signed by the author.
- [43:05]
B
Yeah, I've got boxes and boxes right next to me of those things. Last thing is favorite business books of all time for me. Just a quick note. If you're a new business owner, I think the E Myth Revisited is the best book ever written for new business owners or up and coming business owners because it teaches you how to do systems and standard operating procedures. I to this day still have probably taken more away from that book than any book I've ever read. And I haven't read that book in 10 years. And yet I'm in my library right now. I'm looking over and I've got about 10 copies. I give that book away more than any other book, business book ever written. So when you have a passion, a passion project, and you are an amazing technician at the thing, but you don't know how to own a business or manage a business, the thing will fail. No matter how good the technician is, no matter how good of a mechanic you are, or a baker or a coach or an engineer, whatever the thing is, if you don't know how to own and manage the business, then the business owns you. You don't own the business. That comes right back to what we're talking about with Dan Martell. That's a great starter book that's been out now for 20 plus years probably. And it's still, I think it's as.
- [44:14]
A
Good today as it ever was.
- [44:16]
B
Probably still number one in business on Amazon. And then my favorite book for seasoned business owners is the Hard Thing about Hard Things from Ben Horowitz, which is, it's, it's brutal.
- [44:29]
A
I need to reread it. I read the Hard Thing About Hard Things when I was in the middle of a lot of hard things. And it, I remember it landed well then, but I would like to read it again and reflect back on my time because it's just such a good example of the chaos and so the moments of glory and like everything sort of all wrapped into, into one book. So, so that's another one I need to reread.
- [44:55]
B
Most business owners write their books about the things that they've accomplished or they can champion. The thing I love about Horowitz's book, the Hard Thing About Hard Things, is that he literally writes about all of the total, utter, horrible shit that you have to go through as a business owner. It is the most cathartic, but also depressing. But then he, like, if you know anything about Ben Horowitz, who is half of a 16Z, right, so of Anderson Horowitz, major, major, major venture capital firm, hedge fund, really at this point, it turned out for him. But he tells all the horrifying stories that when you're in the midst of the. I don't know if I can pay payroll. I don't know if I can make the next step. That's a great book to go through. So. Okay, moving on. Sleep rest recovery. I'm a huge sleep rest recovery guy. If we work really hard, we have to rest really well. And so I'm just gonna fire these off and then anything else that you love, please add the most expensive thing on the list, but also the thing that's probably made the greatest impact on my life. And I know you have one as well as an eight sleep. Eight sleep. They advertise on a lot of podcasts. We have not reached out to them. That is, I've never met anybody who hasn't eight sleep. Who doesn't say, that's one of the best purchases I've ever made. I think they're about four grand and what it is. And so it's gonna be. People are gonna be like, holy shit. But here's the deal. A third of your day, you should be sleeping, you should be resting, right? So like eight hours. Now, I don't know that we get eight hours, maybe get six. But I want the quality of my sleep to be fantastic. And it's basically a mattress topper that you can't feel that you can set to be cold or hot. Right. And it pumps water through. So like mine is ice cold and Rachel's next to me is. Hers is hot. So it's can be separated by the side of the bed. And it is just a wonderful thing that makes me sleep. I track my sleep auto sleep on an app on my phone and my sleep immediately improved by probably 33% when I got innate sleep.
- [46:56]
A
Yeah, the eight sleep is a life changer. If you can afford it, it's totally worth it. And I do the same. Mine is as cold as it goes. My wife's is as hot as it goes. Maybe not as hot as it goes, but hot.
- [47:06]
B
But hot.
- [47:07]
A
But it works out really, really well.
- [47:08]
B
The other stuff that I use, I use a manta mask. If you've probably. You maybe seen this on Instagram. So I use a mask. I don't use it every night, mostly because we use blackout shades and my room is pitch black. But if I'm in a hotel, if I'm trying to take a nap during the day, I use a really good sleep mask. And the one that I use has the soft foam earbuds. They don't even go in your ears, they just lay on the side of your ears. And I play white noise. And so I could lay out in my front yard with the sun shining down on me. And so long as the temperature is okay, I Could put that mana mask on. It blocks 100% of the light out. It blocks all the sound out. Now, someone could rob me horrifically at night and I would have no idea. So a train could crash into my first floor of my home and I wouldn't wake up. But the manta mask is fantastic. So I use that. I use blackout shades. The other things I use for sleep, I love a weighted blanket. And I just. Again, no brand specific. I use a 30 pound weighted blanket. The. It's the highest rated one on Amazon. One of the nice things about the weighted blanket is it's not hot. So you often think if it's really heavy, it's going to be hot. It actually is extremely breathable. And so I use that weighted blanket. And then the other thing that we discovered, Rachel discovered a couple years ago are our pillows. This is a brand specific. Again, no relationship here, but it's Coop C, O, O P. Coop home goods pillows. And I know they're awesome because we put them on all the beds, including the guest bedroom. And every single person that stays with us, all of our employees are like, what pillow is that? I'm going to buy that pillow. So they're not, they're, you know, maybe they're expensive for a pillow, but they're. I don't know what they are. 50, 60 bucks. Like they're not $8, but they're not $200 either. So good pillows, you know, dark room, cold room, cold eight sleep. The mask of my eyes, the white noise helps me get fantastic sleep every single night.
- [48:59]
A
You've given me some ideas here. I gotta go buy. I have the lower tier manta mask, but not the one with the ear things. And I probably need that. And I definitely want to look into blackout shades and a weighted blanket as well.
- [49:11]
B
So yeah, it makes a huge difference. All right, moving on to health and we'll bust through these pretty quick. So you guys know we're fitness guys. I own a fitness company. I think everyone should have a home gym. I think a home gym again is a tremendous. Like, you've got an amazing home gym in your basement. I've got a great home gym I could use this time to say you need a squat rack and a barbell and the weights and the stuff and you do. That'd be great. Like do it. But the very basics of a very basic bench and like 20 pound to 50 pound dumbbells and a 30 and or 50 pound kettlebell will help you get a ton accomplished in a short amount of time. Both of us Right now are in super heavy, crazy fourth quarter. We got four weeks to go before the end of the year, and I have about 15 or 20 minutes a day that I can train. And you have about the same. You have decided. So. And I coach you that you're doing one or two main lifts a day and you get out. I might do zero main lifts a day, but I'm doing sort of conditioning circuits with dumbbells and kettlebells and things like that and get my heart rate up really well because I've been super, super strong for years. And I really just need to focus on health right now. And the thing that that does is, for a relatively cheap cost, you can go in and get a really good workout in 15 minutes, and you get the dopamine and the endorphins and all this stuff. It is amazing, the difference what happens. When I'm able to get that workout in, Rachel and I go in and do it together. We usually set up a circuit of three or four exercises. We're rotating through it, and when we're done, we're like. I feel literally like a different person. And so I think something like that is a great place to start.
- [50:47]
A
Well, I think a big thing there also is just to not go. So like I said, don't go too big early. Like, you just need to do enough to kind of get you moving and moving in the right direction. You can expand on that later if you need to.
- [50:59]
B
Yeah, you can outgrow it at some point. All right. I want to go to the health stuff, which is your big. On the, I don't know, cosmetic type things. So walk me through some of those things that you use. And then these are great because they're, like, super, super cheap. These are great stocking stuffers to either ask for or buy that you get a ton of value out of.
- [51:19]
A
Yeah. So, I mean, you know, I've got teenage kids at home, and my wife is also very good at finding these kinds of things. But most people are aware of the patches, like blemish patches today. They're super helpful. Like, everybody, even as adults, we still get, like, you know, acne that just, like, randomly pops up in some bizarro spot. I use the mighty patches that you can get on Amazon. There's now, I think, a lot of competitors in this space, so the price is really driven down. Buy a bunch of them. Like, buy them for your kids. Like, it's useful for teenagers going through. Going through, you know, puberty and stuff. Like, it's. It's very useful for them to be able to have stuff like that around. I have alcohol wipes that I use that are just like the small packet. Alcohol wipes?
- [52:01]
B
Yeah. Just little swabs.
- [52:03]
A
Yep, little swabs. I put them on my nose. I put them on my nose when I'm about to put a Breathe Right strip on, because it gets all the oil off my nose every so often. I get, like, crazy oily also. And I know you're not supposed to strip down all the oil on your skin. I know, like, skin professionals will be like, whoa, what are you doing? But every so often, I just need to take one and just hit my face, my forehead, and maybe my neck and stuff with it, Especially after a haircut seems to be useful. So I use those with some amount of frequency. Love the nose strips. I think I just use traditional, actually. I use the maximum strength breathe Right nose strips, and I use those all the time. Like in the early morning. I'll use them anytime I have any sinus trouble. I will use the. I will use the. The nose strips. Definitely worth having for men that are 30s, 40s, 50s, whatever. You got thinning hair. You're not like Matt and just totally has baked it. Which, by the way, like, during COVID I baked mine too. I didn't look as handsome as Matt looks with my bald head, so I grew my hair back out. But my hair is thinning. I mean, I'm 43 years old, so like, I, you know, I have thinning hair. And part of the thing that has helped me is to use this stuff called hair fibers. You can get them on Amazon. There's a brand there that I use called Topic, but there's. There are others, and they're pretty inexpensive if you have fine hair. Especially, like, I've had fine hair my entire life. Not thin, but fine. Like, it's really, really, you know, like.
- [53:30]
B
Fine hair, not girthy hair. Right, right.
- [53:33]
A
So, you know, I'll use some product on my hair, and then I'll toss a little bit of the hair fibers in and it just. Just thickens up the hair. So again, like, this is a common topic, I think, for men in their 30s, 40s, whatever. As your hair starts thinning, it's a good way to kind of keep what you can as long as you can. Also recently gotten into the cheapest freaking things on Amazon for body measuring. So one of those is the Renfo body measuring tape. I like.
- [53:57]
B
We have this exact thing. We actually have three of these in the house because the girls steal them. And so they're just digital self tensioned measuring tape that you can measure your waist. You can keep track of like your waist measurement you can actually put in. Even if we combine it with the SMART scale that they have, it'll graph over time your weight, your body fat percentage, your waist measurement or whatever measurements you want to take. That renpho is so it's R E N P H O and it's on Amazon and they're dirt cheap.
- [54:30]
A
And so the smart scale was another one that has a feature on it that I've always been missing on the bioimpedance test. You know, that's the one that tests your body fat. They have an athlete setting. And when you're particularly muscular, as Matt and I are, I need a scale that takes that into effect. And so that has helped give me a much more accurate body fat percentage.
- [54:52]
B
BMI is you're morbidly obese and you're like, well, hold on my, I got a 33 inch waist. I don't. But as your waist gets smaller you're like, wait, I'm super lean right now. There's no way. And everybody's seen these are professional athletes. They look at somebody, some professional athlete that's in incredible shape based on their height and weight, they are BMI obese, but they're not. And so having a better tool for that without having to go get. And I still love going and getting a DEXA scan or something every once in a while at the university. But. But to have that at home. The thing is it doesn't even have to be perfectly precise. It's accurate to itself.
- [55:32]
A
Right.
- [55:33]
B
And so over time as your body. So maybe it says your body fat's 28% and maybe your body fat's actually only 17%. It doesn't matter because as you use it every day, if it goes from 28 to 27 and a half to 27 to 26 to whatever, then you know, within its own precision, it's accurate to itself. And so you know that you're making progress, which is really what we're looking for.
- [55:55]
A
Take it in the morning when you first get up, you know, use the restroom first, then hop on the scale. And as long as you take it the same time every day like it is, it's accurate enough to itself for you to know if you're moving in the right direction.
- [56:06]
B
That's right. My last one that is, I've talked about on previous podcasts, I've done many times. I love bidets. You can get a bidet, you can attach it to your toilet. You don't have to have. You know, the olden days, they had the toilet and then they had a bidet next to it. I still don't entirely understand how you move from one to the next, but now you can. So I use Tushy bidets and the website is hellotushy.com do not go to tushy.com. i did it on an airplane one time. Very embarrassing experience.
- [56:37]
A
Yeah.
- [56:38]
B
Hellotushy.com they're like a hundred bucks and you can get them attached. We have five toilets in the house. We have one on every single toilet. It will save you money with toilet paper. It also dramatically speeds up the time it takes to clean yourself and without getting too tmi. Occasionally when you have one that you're like, I need a post poo shower. You get to just have that anyway. And you don't have to actually get in the shower because every post poo is a shower. And so bidets are fantastic. I wish they would become more of a popular thing publicly. I think people don't really understand where the water comes from. And they're like, I don't want to use a bidet that someone else has used. It's like, listen, this thing is fully retracted. It comes out. I've always pictured a very tiny man in there with a laser and he points it directly at your anus and he shoots water at you. I don't really know how it works because it hits perfect every single time. But then you're done in a little dab to dry and you're done. So that's another great gift for a hundred bucks. Okay. Okay. Let's go to home and auto. We've talked about this some, so we'll bust through it. Grocery delivery. Non negotiable.
- [57:43]
A
Yep.
- [57:44]
B
Like every single grocery store, it's like, usually it's $10 a month for this subscription. And then you don't have to grocery shop. You get on the app, you pick your stuff, your stuff gets delivered. And if you're one of those people that are like super crazy anal about after talking about bidets about produce or something, we still occasionally go to the really nice grocery store. You guys have Wegman, you have Wegmans, we have Hy Vee. And I might still go get the really nice. Or maybe I'll go buy shiitake mushrooms or something that maybe I don't want. But for the milk and the bread and the butter, the deli meat and the stuff like that, that should be getting delivered, not taking up your Time. So grocery delivery, that's a no brainer to me. A housekeeper. And whether that is depending on your finances, whether that is someone who comes in once or twice a week or once or twice a month. I pay my house, I'm in Missouri for a day's worth of work. She's about 130 bucks for the day and my house is sparkling clean. And she comes once a week on Mondays. And when she leaves, it is absolutely worth the time and the money to hire somebody. She's better at it than we could be. And so to me it's same thing for lawn mowing or I'm getting ready to have somebody come out and blow my leaves. It's funny, in the northeast I noticed you guys blow your leaves to the curb and then I guess the municipal, they come through and suck up all the leaves. We don't have that here. So you don't have to just blow the leaves. You then have to get rid of the leaves. So I pay for somebody to do that. So those sort of things were the things I'm looking for. Scott Hambrick, my original podcast partner for Barbalogic Podcast, he's a miser. This guy doesn't want to spend an extra dollar on anything. And when we started going on some business trips and we would rent a car, he always prepaid for the gas. And I was like, really? And the gas price, if you prepay is the same price that it is at the gas station. If you return it and you don't do that, they double the price and they gouge you on it. But if you prepay for the gas, there have been a million times where I needed to get to the airport quick and I couldn't find a gas station. Things like that, where you're like, well look, I'm going to drive this car all over Chicago anyway. I'll go ahead and pay the 70 bucks to pre fill the tank and then I'll bring it back as empty as I want to. And I don't care if I bring it back and it has a third of a tank left. It was worth my time. That's what maybe I paid for an extra 15 or $20 worth of gas. I didn't have to go find a gas station, I didn't have to fill the thing up with gas. These are the things I'm looking for that save me time. The last thing is we stock all of our cars with an external battery charger. Like to jump your battery. So if you get into it and you left your lights on or whatever. You don't have to go find some stranger. Do you have jumper cables? Can you jump my car? You just put the battery, you put it on. Click, boom, starts. Done. Right? Same thing with. I have one of those. They now have those small tire inflators.
- [60:40]
A
Those things are, those are mine.
- [60:41]
B
Every car. They're amazing. So like, you roll over a nail, you've got whatever and you're like, I don't want to patch the tire out in the middle of the highway. You can put this thing on in five minutes, your tire's inflated, you drive home and then you can deal with it. Right? Then if you need to take it to the tire or drive it to the tire shop or whatever. The thing is, I'm always looking at things like that. So I think to myself, like, okay, if the battery's dead or the tire's flat and I don't have a way to fix this quickly, this is a three hour, four hour process for me. This is going to take most of my day. I'm looking for those things. And by the way, all of those I just get like on Amazon and look at the reviews and I buy those things because they save me time.
- [61:20]
A
Yeah, totally agree.
- [61:22]
B
Okay. Last thing we'll talk about is some cookware. And then we'll also talk about what we use for the podcast. The other thing that I think is really important from a health perspective is that for us, I want to enjoy cooking. And some people are listening to this and they maybe enjoy cooking. Some people maybe hate cooking. Now, if you hate cooking, we have used the meal services that deliver meals and I don't have one specifically that I would. I've used several. And there's things that I like and don't like about all of them for lunches. They work great. I'm not crazy about having a pre made dinner meal. I want to enjoy cooking dinner. I want to make breakfast and lunch as efficient and fast as possible. And then I don't want to doordash because if we're not careful, we'll spend three grand in a month on doordash. And so the key there is you buy. Really. It's the buy once, cry once. I've got really good chef's knives, Japanese chef's knives, a great butcher block that Rachel got me a couple Christmases ago that actually like my butcher block cutting board. It's probably two and a half by three and a half feet.
- [62:25]
A
Yeah, we have one of those.
- [62:26]
B
It's fantastic. It sits on the island and it stays there and Then we have another. We have one that we use for raw meat and we have another one that we use for non raw meat veggies, things like that. That's great. A great, excellent stainless steel cookware. When you first get married and you get the T Fal from Walmart, that's 119 bucks and it's crap. And then eventually you get stainless steel cookware and you're like, oh, where has this been my entire life? This is so much better, finding those things. A sous vide. For me, I use a sous vide, which is the water bath. If you don't know what it is, it's S o u s V I D e. We cook almost all our meat in a sous vide. And I can cook steaks exactly to medium rare. I can cook chicken to 170 or whatever, it's 165, whatever it's supposed to be. And then take it out and reverse sear the thing. Whether that's on a cast iron or on a grill. These are the things that I love that make cooking enjoyable to me. And when cooking is enjoyable, I cook at home and I don't order pizza and Krispy Kreme donuts and spend a bunch of money on doordash deliveries. So I know you've got a couple as well that you like. Like the cookie sheets. Yeah.
- [63:31]
A
So like, you know, this is one of the differences between you and me. It's always been this way. I have so you have an incredible palate and are also an excellent, excellent chef. I, on the other hand, don't care at all about food and simply want to get nutrition in my belly. And so the things that I put in here are I have a set of stainless steel bowls that I really like with really good lids on them for making this. Like I, I make this really. I think it's delicious. Greek yogurt. I will put Greek yogurt, 0% Greek yogurt, and mix it up with a ton of protein powder. And then I use like a little tiny bit of agave sweetener in there and then put some berries inside of it. And to do that, mix it well, I need a big bowl, but then I just want to put the lid on it and eat on it over time. So I bas do this every single day. I've got like this protein packed yogurt just sitting in my fridge and anytime I'm hungry, I'll just go take a few bites of that thing. Maybe I'll eat half of it or something. But I think that's A really useful thing. I think you want to get yourself a really good set of glass Tupperware stuff. So they've got.
- [64:40]
B
Not Tupperware specifically glass.
- [64:42]
A
That isn't.
- [64:43]
B
We threw away all the plastic Tupperware that we had a few years ago and switched to glass, and it made a massive difference.
- [64:50]
A
Right. So I cook three pounds of a ground chicken in my cast iron skillet every so many days. And I know exactly how I'm gonna.
- [64:59]
B
Like, you know, put partition it out. Yeah.
- [65:02]
A
I put like lowry seasoning, salt and stuff, whatever, and then I just pack it in these things. So I've got this pile of ground chicken that is lean ground chicken, and I have this pile of cooked rice exactly the way that I like it. And every time I'm hungry, I literally get like 100 grams of chicken, 100 grams of rice, and I eat a bowl of it. And that's. That's what I do. Right. So, like, for me, having just the most convenient way to get access to already healthy food that's already ready to go and I can just pop it in the microwave and be done is a game changer. The other one that I'll mention, and I think you're the one that actually showed me this is like, I. We have these. We have three huge stainless steel cookie sheets. Nordic ware naturals is what it's called on Amazon. They're inexpensive. They're super useful. I cook my bacon on Saturday mornings. Our family will always do, like breakfast in the morning. And I cook my bacon on that thing. I put aluminum foil on it and I put it up the lay it out on this cookie sheet. And I put my bacon in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes or whatever. It is crispy all the way through. I can. I don't even have to clean the pan.
- [66:04]
B
It doesn't get all curled up.
- [66:07]
A
Perfect. It's so, so delicious. Those pans are great. I use them to cook. If I cook cookies or anything else, just like a giant, they're never big enough. So, like, this one is giant and it's really, really useful.
- [66:16]
B
Yeah. Last thing I would say is I love great coffee. I know you do too. I won't steer you to a specific coffee maker necessarily, but the two things that I really love is a great way to make coffee. And so I have moved from which, if you're looking for, I started with a Breville espresso maker. Those things are like 500 bucks and they're made for home. They have the grinder all on them and they make perfectly good espresso. Now you want to get good coffee. Like, don't stick folgers in it. Like, go get good locally roasted whole bean coffee. You can make an espresso, you can make an americano, you can make a cappuccino. What I like about an espresso maker is you can make a cup of coffee at a time in under 60 seconds. So instead of having to brew an entire pot and then that pot oxidizes all day long and it's kind of gross three hours later, you just make it a cup at a time. There's days where I have one cup of coffee. There's days where I have four cups of coffee, but I can make those one one at a time. Now I've upgraded to an ECM machine. The company that I've used in the past, that's a German made. It's kind of a semi commercial, like some crossover between home and commercial. And they're decently expensive. But I use a company called Whole Latte Love. And they've got great machines there for anything from like, I don't know, 7, $800,000 up to $5,000 or something you can get. Whether it's a mocha pot. You've got a machine that you use that makes coffee for. You can make tea for your wife. Like you've got.
- [67:36]
A
I use the Miele. I like this M, I, E L E. And it's, it's not cheap. I mean the one that also will ground my beans and then make a cup at a, at a time. It's pro. I think I just looked it up online. It's like 1800, 1900 bucks.
- [67:50]
B
So it's not cheap.
- [67:51]
A
But I drink coffee every day and I drink five cups at a minimum every day. So like, you know, a lot of coffee. This is an example of what we talked about earlier. If you do something a lot.
- [68:02]
B
Yep.
- [68:03]
A
It's. It's time to spend money on it.
- [68:04]
B
When I was in my office all day, every day in my office and in the house I'm in now, I kind of have, have three or four different office types. I'm sitting in my library right now. I've done podcasts in the past. You guys have seen me at the bookshelves that kind of look similar to yours. That's my office when I was in an office every single day. Another thing that Scott Hambrick told me, the Miser, he said, you need to buy yourself a really good Herman Miller chair. I was sitting on Big Lots, $55 office chairs and I was replacing them every six months. And a good Herman Miller chair might be 1000 bucks. You can buy refurbished, a really nice refurbished one for six or seven hundred bucks. Bucks. And then they have a lifetime warranty on them. Like, I'm sitting in the chair 12 hours a day. Why would I sit in a crappy chair? That's stupid.
- [68:46]
A
Literally, you've just sold me on. I used to have a Herman Miller chair, and I ended up buying this one. This sort of cushy, like, office chair or leather.
- [68:54]
B
Yep.
- [68:55]
A
I hate it because it's hot. And like, I just. So I'm totally. When we get off this call, I'm buying a Herman Miller chair. That will happen.
- [69:02]
B
And then the. The last thing with the coffee is the. A really good coffee cup to drink the coffee out of. So I got as a gift last year from our military consultant, a really nice yeti coffee mug that keeps my coffee hot. And so whether it, you know, sometimes I drink a cup of coffee in five minutes, and sometimes I drink a cup of coffee over an hour. And for 30 bucks, you can get a really nice. An actual coffee mug. The one I have is pretty big and girthy, but sort of short. So it fits underneath my espresso maker and it lets me really enjoy coffee. So. Okay, last thing. If you're looking to make content, as we talked about last week, having a good microphone and having a good camera doesn't have to be something that you're like. I don't even know where to start. So what is the microphone? It's the one that you're using right now. Right.
- [69:53]
A
Okay. This microphone is the Shure MV7 USB mic. And it. So I have Matt's mic as well.
- [70:02]
B
The RE20, which is about 800 bucks. And that one is. This was third in the price. Yeah, I think it's fourth price. Yeah. Yeah.
- [70:11]
A
So the. The thing is, I like the simplicity. I want to plug this into a USB port and be done. I want to. I want to be able to put it in my luggage very easily.
- [70:19]
B
Really good for travel. It's really good for travel.
- [70:22]
A
It's just fantastic. It makes it to where you can have. You can shoot a podcast. You can do whatever you need to do on the run. Love this mic. And then the camera that you and I both have, although right now you're on a different camera because you need a plug in, which we'll talk about in a second.
- [70:38]
B
Yep.
- [70:38]
A
But the camera that we use is the Sony ZV E10. This is pretty much the most popular camera in existence for shooting this type of talking head video.
- [70:49]
B
If you have photography skills as like a DSLR type, you want to take high end photography. This camera works great.
- [70:56]
A
Absolutely.
- [70:57]
B
But as a webcam, it is going to set you apart. I mean, again, if you're watching this on YouTube right now, look at my camera, which is I'm using a logitech, you know, $80 HD camera because I ran the battery out on my Sony this morning. And you're using the Sony. Look at the difference on, like the way we look and the way our faces look. And the background for me is not blurred and the background for you is blurred. That Sony camera is nails.
- [71:24]
A
One thing I'll say about this, for those of you who spend a lot of time on zoom calls, I cannot tell you how many times people tell me on a zoom call, your setup looks so amazing. Like, what have you done? And it does set you apart. I think that this is the new version of dress for the job you want.
- [71:41]
B
That's right.
- [71:41]
A
Like today, work from home. Like, if you're working from home, you know, I'm wearing a hoodie right now. I get to wear a hoodie on calls with executives because they're wearing hoodies too or whatever. Like, people don't care as much about that today. But the professionalism of the way that your camera looks, I think really can go a long way down.
- [71:59]
B
And sound quality and sound, absolutely, both.
- [72:01]
A
Of those two things. The other thing that I'll mention is, and we'll put it in the show notes because I can't remember what it is. The thing that gives you the effect of the blur in the background is actually the lens that you put on that camera. And it's also kind of expensive. It's maybe 100 or 200 bucks for the lens, but that lens makes a huge difference as well. So we'll get those dropped into the, into the show notes for sure.
- [72:22]
B
All right. We just gave you guys about 70 things that you could buy either for others or ask for yourself for Christmas or just buy them for yourself because you're a business owner. And a lot of these things could just be a business expense. You just expense this thing out, which is what I did with the Sony camera and the microphones. And so there you go. So that is about as materialistic as we're ever going to get on this show. But these are all things that actually bring us value, save us time, and make us more effective and efficient at our jobs as founders for our businesses. And so those are the things as you're listening to this, this podcast as you've come to hopefully love the podcast. You're like, I don't know what to ask for for Christmas or what to buy for myself. There's a whole bunch of stuff that you can do. I am constantly just thinking about. I don't buy a thing to play with. I buy things that make my life easier and save me time and make me more efficient and more effective so I can not drown in the urgent things and I can focus on the important things. Absolutely awesome. That's another episode of the build your business podcast with Matt Chris Reynolds. Hope you guys enjoyed it. If you did, please give us a five star review on Apple Podcasts. Right? That's what it's called. Or Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast. And of course we're always on YouTube, which is cool. So we've now YouTube is the fastest growing podcast platform in the world. And so you can always catch us on YouTube if you haven't done that yet. And you can see the difference between my crappy camera today and your really nice camera today. And you can go get the nice Sony ZV E10. Thanks for listening. Hope you guys have a great holiday weekend and we'll catch you guys next Friday.