← The Side Hustle Show
The Side Hustle Show
642: 50+ Tools and Apps to Work Smarter and Get More Out Of Your Side Hustle
01:15:06
Loading summary
Transcript195 lines
- [00:01]
Nick Loper
Hey, it's time for Tool Talk. These are 50 plus tools and apps to work smarter and get more out of your side Hustle. What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle show where we've been helping make day jobs optional since 2013. Now, this is one of the most requested topics that I get. A look under the hood at the different tools, apps, resources, software services that I use to run side Hustle Nation. And because I'm not that great at just reading off a list and monologuing for an hour, I thought it would be more fun to have a co host for this discussion who's going to bring her own opinions and insights and recommended resources to the table as well. She's the host of the award winning podcast that highlights black women entrepreneurs who scaled their side hustles into profitable businesses. And she's an accomplished entrepreneur in her own right. From side Hustle Pro, Nikayla Matthews Okome. Welcome to the similarly named side Hustle Show.
- [00:49]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Thank you. Thank you so much, Nick. Wow, that was quite an intro and it's always fun to hear a fellow podcaster. I'm like, oh, you rock that. Oh, you're so good at this.
- [00:58]
Nick Loper
Well, very much appreciated. You are no stranger to the mic. With over 400 episodes of this side Hustle Pro podcast running since 2016, I'm excited to learn a little bit more about your business and the toolkit that you've been using to run it as well. We've got a bunch of different categories to run through today, but since the common thread here is online business, we're going to start with website tools. I still believe that even in the age of social media and video, I think it's really important to have that website as your home base. And for me that starts with WordPress and specifically generate Press is the theme that I've been using for the last seven something years for that. WordPress of course has the advantage of being free, open source GeneratePress, pretty affordable, premium theme, lightweight, loads fast, customizable, and what's cool about WordPress specifically is just like the ecosystem of plugins and support where there's a little bit like any software, there's a little bit of a learning curve to bend it to your will, but it's super, super powerful and it seems to be the platform that all of the serious website builders are using. Is that what side Hustle Pro is hosted on as well?
- [02:03]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
That is absolutely Side Hustle Pro is hosted on. I've been using WordPress and it's funny you mentioned the theme detector because I started out by getting, you know, a WordPress site and then going to this site called WordPress Theme Detector. So it's wp-themedetector.com I believe I will link to it. And from there I just. It allows you to copy a URL, plug it in, you know, to see like what theme that WordPress site is using and then just use the same theme. So when I was starting out and I wanted a professional looking podcast website, I went to a fellow podcaster site that I thought looked really clean, really good and I just copied the theme.
- [02:41]
Nick Loper
Yeah, I love that, you know, it was Control U or something like looking at the source code, see if we could find out what, what the theme file directories are like. Totally have done all that stuff. One of my first sites was this virtual assistant directory and it was a site that I found I was like researching a wine niche site. Like I don't know anything about wine. I had no business being in that space. But one of the sites I found was this like wine wine club review. I was like, you know, decent, decent layout, decent structure is exactly the same thing. Well, what theme are they using? Like, okay, we could just rebuild this to be about the world of virtual assistants. So very cool.
- [03:13]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
So much of side hustling is literally rebuilding.
- [03:18]
Nick Loper
You don't have to reinvent the wheel. Right. And so we misspoke earlier. Like it said, okay, this is hosted on WordPress. It's not, it's self hosted. And for me, the hosting platform that side Hustle Nation has been on for over 10 years at this point is WPX. WPX hosting. Amazing customer support where they like respond with within seconds on the live chat. They've helped me out of so many different, you know, just technical challenges and issues that come up. They take daily backups. They've been awesome. And for it's one of those bills that I think I pay annually. And up until very recently it was like 25 bucks a month or. But paid annually like some Black Friday deal, you know, it was like even less than that. And I, you know, just recently like went over my allocated disk space for it and so I had to, you know, go up to the next, the next storage tier. But it's one of those bills that every time would come around be like, I'm getting such an amazing deal from these people. Like this is like, this is like what, you know those costs where you're like really happy to pay.
- [04:11]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Oh yeah, that is an amazing deal. Because yeah, hosting is so expensive. I thought I was hosting on Blue Host for a number of years and then recently in 2023 switched over to SiteGround.
- [04:25]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [04:25]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
I've had a positive experience so far with SiteGround. Actually my web designer recommended it and then same thing, they give me emails with updates on performance, what can be improved and all these other things. So I find that really helpful too.
- [04:39]
Nick Loper
Yeah. Now the other thing that I still have this bluehost account for is creating these like redirects and I don't know what, what. They've got a bunch of different plans but like the one that allows for lots of different add on domains. So register vanity domains for the sake of saying them on the, on the podcast. Like, you know, one of the first ones I got was like buybuttonsbook.com and that'll take you over to Amazon for the book or you know, you want to start a website of your own, go to side hustle website.com and it'll go to my tutorial page. And this was a page straight out of the Pat Flynn playbook, you know, back in the day where he'd do this.
- [05:10]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
I was like, oh that's really smart, you know. Yeah. I'm trying to figure out like how I can consolidate. It's a lot of backend work when you switch over a host and you definitely, you don't want to make sure any of your old sites crash. So it's like, am I doing duplicate payments right now? So I need to figure that out.
- [05:26]
Nick Loper
Yeah. Okay. So that is the hosting side of things for the domain registration things. Use GoDaddy for a lot of years and still have some domains at GoDaddy. Lately it's been Pork Bun, who was a one time sponsor of the show, but just I like their very simple, straightforward interface without trying to sell you a million different add ons like godaddy tries to do.
- [05:46]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
I still use godaddy but yeah, it's so annoying. You're like, ugh, do I need this? What is actually needed here?
- [05:53]
Nick Loper
We've talked about like the GoDaddy conspiracy theory of like, you know, checking to see if a domain is available. Like no, no, no, don't do that unless you're ready to click buy. It's like for some like somebody is scraping this.
- [06:04]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yeah, yeah.
- [06:04]
Nick Loper
You know, it's happened too often to just be purely coincidence. And now I go back a week later and it happens to be registered like oh come on.
- [06:10]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Exactly.
- [06:11]
Nick Loper
We have the next one on this list is the page builder or in My case, Beaver Builder, which is it turns WordPress into more of a WYSIWYG type of editor. What you see is what you get type of editor where you could drag and drop and manipulate it a little bit easier. And so Beaver Builder has been awesome for that.
- [06:28]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
I use Elementor, or I should say my website designer. So I started out with WordPress and after three years of podcasting, I hired a website designer and so she took over and added in Elementor to do all the design and all that stuff. So I can't even say that I use that other than making edits anytime. You know, it's very user friendly. So that's a great thing. I'm not a website designer, but after she's done with her project, project and demands, obviously I'm not going to call her every time I need to set up a new page, make an edit, set up a landing page. So Elementor is really easy and straightforward to go in and do any kind of edits.
- [07:04]
Nick Loper
Yeah. And the way these work, it kind of layers on top of your existing WordPress theme. And I use it to create custom pages, custom landing pages that, you know, you don't want to follow the exact, you know, default template. But more often it's like little call outs inside the post you can use little shortcode for and you kind of build these things. And the cool thing about that, you can, you can embed that in a bunch of different posts and if that link changes or you want to highlight a different partner or different product, you can, you know, swap that out in one place in the, in the Beaver Builder saved row and it updates throughout the whole site versus going in and manually updating a dozen different posts.
- [07:38]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
I agree.
- [07:38]
Nick Loper
That concludes our website section. I'm sure there's going to be more website related things lower. Lower on this list too.
- [07:44]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yes. Yeah, plugins might come up. We'll see, I'm sure.
- [07:48]
Nick Loper
So the next category that we've got is marketing tools. And one big shift for me that we talked about this year was a shift from ActiveCampaign to ConvertKit. I guess it's just Kit now for the email list. Hugely important part of the business, you know, to be able to take an anonymous podcast listener and say, oh, well, now I have the chance to communicate proactively with them instead of whenever they happen to download the thing. You on Kit as well?
- [08:11]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
I am on Kit. I am. It's so new to me to say Kit, but yes, I want Kit and I like it a lot. I started out with mailchimp like most people, early marketers. And then it switched over to ConvertKit when I got way more serious about tagging people, subscribers as they come onto my list and being able to deliver automations and sequences. So if you're not a marketer and that all seems like jargon and just, you know, jibber jabber to you, basically when someone gives you their email for a freebie that you offer, I love being able to customize their experience. When I'm really on my game, like I can't even lie and act like I'm still not working things out sometimes. But let's say I am leading a webinar, right? So I like how ConvertKit makes it really easy to send follow up reminder emails to tag people and make sure the right people are getting that or are not getting that. So I'm not bothering people who don't want this info about a podcast webinar.
- [09:11]
Nick Loper
Yeah, totally. If you are sending straight newsletter, you know, on a regular cadence, it could be beehive, it could be substack, it could be any number of different tools. But for the automation and segmentation and tagging and all the other features that ConvertKit or Kit has, I think it's really cool. And there's safety in numbers. Like this is what James Clear uses or this is what Tim Ferriss uses, you're like, okay, well if it's good enough for them, it's probably good enough for me.
- [09:32]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yeah, exactly. And that's how a lot of my tools started. Like, oh, you use that. Amy Porterfield. Okay, cool.
- [09:39]
Nick Loper
Yes. Safety of numbers. What else I like about Kit is like they've made a lot of investment in the creator economy where they're like really rooting for the small guy. It feels like where they've built out their sponsor network and their creator network where you could recommend other newsletter creators that you might like that might be worth a follow in a similar niche. It's like trying to lift everybody up, which is cool to be a part of that ecosystem.
- [10:06]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
You're so right about that. It really is. And I like the content they develop, whether it's on their blog. And even the founder, he has a podcast as well. What's his last name again, Nate?
- [10:18]
Nick Loper
Nathan Barry.
- [10:18]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Nathan Barry. Yeah. It, it does make it more approachable when you hear the founder of a business. I like how Nathan, he just is so approachable. When I hear him on his own podcast and he's talking about his experience building and that's what I me an entrepreneur is going through. So it adds A level of trust and also likability factor to the entire brand. Not to rave about ConvertKit for forever.
- [10:42]
Nick Loper
I know, but he's always been front and center, even showing up at events, you know, even as the CEO of, you know, 30, $40 million company, whatever. There's now he remembers your name, you know, it's like, hey, remember we talked a few years ago about this. Like he's, you know, it plays a part very well and, and he's built a cool product as well. So I lied and said we were done with the website section.
- [11:01]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
I knew we weren't done.
- [11:03]
Nick Loper
The next on this list that I have is LeadPages, which is a landing page builder that have been a customer for probably close to 10 years at this point. It was another recurring subscription. I was like, do I really need this in my life? I was like really hesitant to buy it. But within three months, you know, I tripled the size of my email list. Within 12 months it was like 10 or 12x, like, okay, this is, you know, this is worthwhile. What I primarily use it for today is, you know, it still has that landing page functionality to collect emails. What I originally used it for was like a double, like a two step opt in. Like you want to download this thing? Okay, a nice looking popup will come in and then you could do it. I don't use that so much anymore. But now you can have these kind of landing pages after an opt in with a limited time, you know, thank you page with like a limited time add on upsell offer that I've been doing for a couple years and it has like a little countdown timer and it like integrates with stripe with the payment processors. Lots of cool stuff you can do with leadpages.
- [12:00]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Ooh, I think I need to be doing more. But I love leadpages. I would say this is one of my favorite tools as a side hustler, entrepreneur because it makes it so easy to set up a quick landing page, AKA it feels like you've set up a quick like mini website and no one will know the difference. And so I use that primarily for when I do live classes, live trainings and that. Like I have one that it's just been with me since I started using LeadPages and similar to you, I tripled the size of my list when I started using them right away I did like a master Instagram challenge and that and we actually did a little mini case study. So I love LeadPages and it's fun, funny, back in the day I also, I Saw the bill and I thought about canceling it. And the customer service agent was kind of like, well, we're showing that you made this much revenue from your lead page last year. Are you sure you don't want to pay this annual fee? I'm like, you're right, you're right. I'll keep it.
- [12:59]
Nick Loper
Yeah, it makes it hard to get rid of, but. And that's cool because, like, if you're doing a webinar, you're doing a live training. There's all these templates that you could just. You don't have to start from scratch, and it's such a time saver. So. So I definitely like what they're doing.
- [13:11]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yes.
- [13:12]
Nick Loper
The next one on this list is a newer to me tool, maybe in the last year and a half or so. And that is a quiz builder called Interact. It's, I think try interact.com, but we'll link all this stuff up in the show notes for you.
- [13:24]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
We're using all the same tools, Nick.
- [13:28]
Nick Loper
I was expected a little bit more of a debate or back and forth, but I'm sure we'll get to that later in the show. But Interact, super cool.
- [13:34]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
I feel like you're using things in different ways that, like you said, like the lead pages. So, yeah, we can also talk about that because I'm like, oh, tell me how to use it, how to optimize my use.
- [13:45]
Nick Loper
Happy to geek out on that stuff too. But Interact. A couple different quizzes that are live right now. One is on the homepage of side Hustle Nation. This is like your Side Hustle finder. Answer a couple questions about your interests, goals. Experience is going to hopefully narrow down the realm of possibility or point you in the right direction. And then I took an idea from a guest on the show, Shannon Weinstein. You can see this in action at Hustle Show. You know, answer a few quick questions and it'll spit out, you know, this 8 to 10 episode recommended playlist based on your answers. And that's been working really, really well.
- [14:17]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Ooh, I love that. That's a great idea. So I love try Interact as well. And funny enough, I just recently started using it. I used to have a different landing page or, excuse me, website freebie that was like the primary driver. And then I finally said, let me finally try it out as a quiz. And similar to you, I have a side Hustle personality. Like, but it's more like which side Hustle is right for you. So the whole prem of side Hustle Pro is about building out A side hustle from passion project to profitable business. So I want people to understand like, hey, are you the creative type?
- [14:50]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [14:50]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Are you a service based consultant type? So that quiz, it immediately just took off and I also cut. I also run ads to it. They're paused right now, but I run ads to it as a lead magnet and then, you know, you're able to, as a fulfillment, you get the. Your response and then also tailored customized strategies via email once you get your response from the quiz.
- [15:15]
Nick Loper
Yeah, I think it's a really cool level of personalization that you're able to do. Plus you get this first party data that nobody else really has. And so one thing that was surprising to me on the homepage quiz, I think one of the first questions is, do you want a side hustle to make extra money or do you want to side hustle to eventually quit your job? And my mentality is, of course people want the quit your job version. And I think the podcast listener Persona is probably more in that bucket. But four out of five people that landed on the homepage were like, I want a side hustle to make extra money. I was like, oh, that's really. Yeah, that's really interesting. And so. And now you can segment those people on the email list and you do all this, all sorts of cool stuff.
- [15:55]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
So question for you with your playlist. So are you sending them to an actual, like a mini episode player on your site or how are you doing that playlist? Just linking out the episodes?
- [16:07]
Nick Loper
Yeah, it's done through Spotify. So create those custom, I guess, public playlists in Spotify and then send people so they can add those to their device.
- [16:15]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Love it, love it. Stealing it.
- [16:17]
Nick Loper
Perfect. Let it snowball. More tool talk with Nikayla in just a moment. Including another relatively new to me tool that's helped add thousands of subscribers to my email list. That's coming up right after this. What if you no longer needed five separate apps for your business? Bank account, expense tracking, invoicing, contractor payments, and tax planning. I'm excited to partner with our new sponsor, Found, for this episode because Found is business banking designed specifically for side hustlers, solopreneurs and small business owners like you. Under the hood, you'll find one easy to use app to help manage your money, track your spending, invoice clients, and even handle your taxes so you can focus on more important things like running your business. There's no minimum balances, there's no account maintenance fees, and there's no paperwork or credit checks when you sign up. One cool feature Found calls them Pockets lets you allocate income to certain categories like marketing or taxes or profit. Which is really handy if you want to practice the profit first methodology. But you really don't want to set up a bunch of different accounts. Over 500,000 small business owners like you chose Found as their banking solution. So stop getting lost in countless finance apps and try Found for free@found.com Sidehustle Sign up for Found for Free today at F o u n d.com Sidehustle. Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by Piermont bank member fdic. Found's core features are free. They also offer an optional paid product Found Plus Here's a quick side hustle you can do today. It's called the Substitution Game and it's an easy way to score what I call reverse passive income in your life. That's money you're no longer spending every month. That goes straight to your bottom line. How it works is you find lower cost alternatives to the things you're already spending money on. For example, I made the switch to our sponsor Mint mobile back in 2019 and haven't looked back. Mint Mobile offers Premium Wireless for 15 bucks a month when you purchase a three month plan and all plans come with high speed data and unlimited talk and text delivered on the nation's largest 5G network. You can use your own phone with any Mint Mobile plan and keep your existing phone number along with all your existing contacts. To get this new customer offer and your new three month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mint mobile.com sidehustle that's mintmobile.com Sidehustle cut your wireless bill to 15 bucks a month at mintmobile.com Sidehustleen $45 upfront payment required equivalent to $15 per month. NewCo customers on first three month plan only speeds slower above 40 gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees and restrictions apply. See Mint Mobile for details. The next on this list is a Facebook Group lead generating tool called Group Leads. This has been part of our customer flow or lead Flow for the past couple years where it automatically so you know when somebody joins the Facebook group it asks a couple questions. It's like hey, do you have a side hustle already? If yes, tell me about it. You want to get our best side hustle tips and an insider Mess insider newsletter through email. You know, put your email in here and then through Group Leads it automatically sends that data over to Kit now and it adds those people to the Email list and it, and it can detect is that person already on the list or is that a new subscriber? And you kind of send different messages based on where they're coming from.
- [19:46]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Ooh, I love that I need to implement that. So yeah, that's one I haven't been using. So yes, definitely want to test that out myself. Group leads.
- [19:55]
Nick Loper
Yeah. So the side Hustle Nation Facebook group. Side hustlenation.com FB we'll get you over there. You can see this in action as well if you're not already a member. And this has added thousands of new subscribers a year. So I love the, you know, broader strategy is like have the Facebook group for your topic for your community. And then, you know, the next level is like, well, how do you get people off of Facebook, into your email list, into your ecosystem a little bit? And so group leads has been super helpful for that.
- [20:22]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yep. Getting people off of social media and into your email list is. It's just huge. As an entrepreneur, do you do anything similar for like Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter?
- [20:32]
Nick Loper
I gotta learn from you on the Instagram stuff. I do almost nothing over there. All right, I've got a WordPress plugin for you at number 10 or 10. I don't know, we're probably losing count on this list. This is called Pretty Link. This is a long run WordPress plugin that helps you create easy to remember affiliate links. And both for podcast episodes where I could say, hey, the show notes for this one are@side hustlenation.com Nikayla or you could do it for if you want to go check out courses on udemy. It's side hustlenation.com udemy so it makes it easy to say if you don't want to go. We mentioned before creating that custom vanity domain like buybuttonsbook.com like this is a free way to do that.
- [21:13]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
I use Pretty Link all the way. I love Pretty Link and customizing and I also even do it for like Facebook ads for example. If I have a link in the ad, I want to make sure that it's not this whole long link. So I often make sure I have a custom link or if I want to know if you clicked on Instagram to listen to the episode or on Facebook or what have you. I make customized links for data tracking as well.
- [21:37]
Nick Loper
Yeah, that's a good way to do it. And the next one is also affiliate related. And this is the Lasso plan plugin. I think it's Getlasso Co. We had the founder, Andrew on the show a year or two ago and this was another one. It's like, do I need another recurring subscription? But it's like, I don't know what the price is, like 39 bucks a month or something. It's not crazy expensive because the lift in conversions that you see from creating these cool wire cutter inspired product displays far exceeds the cost of the, of the little tool. So I think it looks really cool. We have slowly been going through the entire site and creating little product displays, little call outs and they, I think they look great, they look good on mobile and they perform really well too.
- [22:22]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Ooh, definitely heard of Get Lasso, but I haven't used it yet. So thank you for endorsing it. So now I'm definitely going to check it out.
- [22:29]
Nick Loper
Yeah, it's one of these call it management by looking around where you're like, well, what is everybody else doing? And you're like, oh, everybody else has these cool little product displays like I'm missing about for the longest time. Like I tried to build it myself like in Beaver Builder. It just could never get the same look and feel. And it's like, ah, you know, why stop cheaping out, Just go and do the thing.
- [22:50]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Right, right. Which products are you displaying when you say that?
- [22:53]
Nick Loper
Oh, so it will be, you know, tools like fundrise or it'll be like, go check out the flea market Flipper workshop.
- [23:01]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Ooh, that'll be really cool to do for my sponsors.
- [23:04]
Nick Loper
Yeah, that one is pretty cool. My digital product business, my course business is host on Teachable and this is probably going on five years at this point. Teachable was one of the very first sponsors on the show, so always will have a warm place in my heart for Teachable and their founding team as they took a chance, you know, as a up and coming podcaster. But this is a place to host your courses, a place to process payments for those, you know, host the sales pages, all sorts. Kind of like an all in one tool for courses.
- [23:35]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yes. I also use Teachable and I host my podcast Moguls course on that. So that's a course where I teach aspiring podcasters how to launch and monetize your own podcast. And it's been really great. It's a seamless experience to go in, set up the modules, then you get the replays. When we have our mastermind calls, you can send people to the checkout sales page there. Or if you do another like funnel type of website, which I'm sure we'll get to, you can still just send them the Info to get registered and get started with the course on teachable. So I really like teachable.
- [24:10]
Nick Loper
Yeah, they've been around, been around forever. There's a bunch of different lms or learning management system type of tools.
- [24:15]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Right.
- [24:16]
Nick Loper
Pros and cons to all of them. But it's been working fine over here.
- [24:20]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yeah. What you'll find with tools is the switching costs. Like you have to really make it worth it for someone to want to switch their whole workflow and take their content over to another platform. So I don't think any other course provider has, has made the switching costs worthwhile.
- [24:38]
Nick Loper
Yeah, it's got to be, it's going to be, have to be a significant feature improvement or significant cost savings to unravel all of that. And that was what it was for activecampaign. It's like really, we've got hundreds of different forms. It's all these integrations and to their credit ConvertKit's like, hey, we'll do it for you. And they did. So it's like, okay, the next one on, I guess a couple on this list are going to be SEO related. And first one for me is ahrefs. It's a H R E F S. This is the leading keyword research tool and has been for a long time. For anybody serious about ranking their content in Google. All the serious SEO people, you know, friends, colleagues, people in the industry tend to use this one and they recently came out with a starter plan that was like a third of the cost. And so it's like, okay, that's the one, one that I need because it's like it was always kind of a little bit expensive for what we were using it for. And it's the same thing where it's like, well, the ROI is definitely there. If you can get a piece of content that the keyword topic you discovered through Ahrefs and you created that content and you got it to stick, it definitely pays for itself. But like it definitely also pays for itself if it's a third of the cost. And you and the feature set didn't really change. So really cool to have discovered that just recently.
- [25:50]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Oh, I like that. Another one that, you know, I for SEO was really doing the basic of using a WordPress plugin and I think it was called Yoast. But there's a new business that my husband and I are starting so I'm gonna, I'm gonna take it a step up and actually use. What's it called? Href. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For that because again, I, I wanna start out by knowing, okay, what can we rank for? What are the top searches for this? What are the suggested searches? So what exactly does it do for you?
- [26:19]
Nick Loper
So one of the cool things you can do is plug in a similar or a competitor site and see what pages of theirs are doing well, what pages, you know, what kind of keywords that they have created content for. And it's kind of like this opening spark of inspiration be like, oh, that's an interesting. I never would have thought about that. And then the other kind of use case is we've got all of these different keyword topics now or ideas, you know, that we could create. And then you punch them all in and it'll tell you the approximate search volume or traffic potential plus the estimated difficulty of each one. And so, so naturally sorting by, you know, which ones have the most traffic potential and are the easiest in theory to rank for.
- [26:58]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
There was something else I used for that and for some reason, oh, I've used SEM Rush tool. Oh yeah, Yeah, I had to look that up. Definitely use SEM Rush.
- [27:07]
Nick Loper
Okay. The other SEO tool that we've been using is Frase. It's F R A S E. This is a little bit nerdier, but it works in a couple different ways. First, you can input a new content idea. Hey, this is the article that I want to write. And it pulls in, you know, the top 10, 20 search results that are already in Google for that topic and says if you're creating this article, this is what Google already thinks is the most valuable content. So you can help kind of build your outline based on that. And the second way you can use it is to say, well, I already have this article on topic xyz, but it's, it's due for a refresh. And it works similarly where it's like, well, you know, your, your content mentions this phrase, you know, twice, but the top 10 results mention it four times. So you might want to increase. It's like really granular and kind of like, I don't know if that's really, if that could be considered AI, but it like just kind of helps you try and figure out what, where the gaps might be in your content.
- [28:01]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
So you find that you need that on top of ahrefs. That's interesting.
- [28:05]
Nick Loper
Yeah, so ahrefs more for the like key the general seed ideas for content. And then this is like helping you build out the outlines or improve existing content. And you could use ChatGPT for this probably.
- [28:16]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yeah, I was going to say, I think I've been since I've been using ChatGPT. I've been kind of defaulting to it, but I absolutely am going to test them out. I don't know if I want to pay for all of it again though.
- [28:26]
Nick Loper
Our next section is productivity tools and all of these are productivity tools in one form or another. But for me, the top one, the first tab that gets open every day, probably a bad habit, is Gmail. It's like one inbox to rule them all. If you email me nickide hustlenation.com, it'll come into that Gmail inbox and you've got all of these, you know, filters set up where, you know, newsletters go over here and you know, affiliate sales notifications go over here, here and then, you know, personal stuff goes into this folder and you know, PayPal receipts go into, you know, this accounting type of folder. And so it's kind of that one central inbox to really, to really rule them all.
- [29:04]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Gmail has been holding me down since the beginning of side Hustle Pro. And again, one inbox. If you email me at hi@sidehousepro co, it's going there and it usually is. Sometimes I do my calendar before Gmail, but yeah, that definitely one of the first places I'm in each day.
- [29:21]
Nick Loper
Probably a bad habit, but it's, you know, 15, 20 years old at this point. It's gonna be hard to break. One tool that I layer on top of Gmail is a software called SaneBox, which is kind of a smart, like first level filtering where for everything that comes in, it decides like, does this need to go to your primary inbox or does this need to go into kind of a secondary, less important inbox? And it's, it's remarkable. Good at that. And you still have to go check the secondary inbox. They call it Sane later. It's like, it's not urgent, you can look at it later and you still need to go and clean that out and you can train stuff, you can drag it back and forth. But that's been a, I've been a customer of theirs for a lot of years and there's, they filtered out thousands of thousands of messages at this point that were less important and stopped cluttering up the main inbox.
- [30:06]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Ooh, I think I need that for my personal. I used to use Boomerang a lot more and, and even for like sending later, but obviously you can do that now just via Gmail. And what I find with the inbox is I just want to be able to see everything first. I Don't want it to go. Like, sometimes things would go to filters and I wouldn't even. I don't know. I just want to make sure that I'm seeing everything. But I do have my inbox divided, starred on top, and then unread. And so it's nice because once I've read and addressed it, it's blank. I don't have a. I don't like keeping a huge inbox at all. And then. But starred lets me know what I need to get back to. And that's my simple system right now. And then everything has. I have a ton of filters. So I do organize by. All right, this email goes to. Address, this goes to. I even have things like email examples. And I'll do that by name of the influencer or content creator. And I'm like, oh, I like this email. So I'll save it in their special inbox for me to go back to and review.
- [31:07]
Nick Loper
Yeah, take inspiration from somebody else rather than starting from that blank page, rather than starting from scratch.
- [31:13]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Exactly, exactly.
- [31:14]
Nick Loper
You mentioned Boomerang as a good Gmail add on. The one that I've been using for a long time is called nudgemail, where it's like, this isn't important today, but I want to resurface in a couple weeks. You just cc or forward that message to like2weeksudgemail.com and it brings it back to the top of your image inbox. Or if you sent a note to a sponsor or a client and you want to make sure to follow up with them in a few days, you can say, like, just CC or BCC. Maybe you don't want them to see it, like five days@nudgemail.com like any commonly expressed timeframe, it'll resurface that interim box. So that's been a cool, helpful tool as well.
- [31:54]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Oh, I like that.
- [31:56]
Nick Loper
Next on this list is a clipboard management tool. I'm on PC, so this is Clip, which allows you to, like, saves the last 25 things you copied onto your clipboard, which is like, you're just one of these, like, little desktop productivity tools. I've heard that Copy Clip is the Mac alternative, but this is something that I use all day, every day without even thinking about it.
- [32:17]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Now, that's so interesting. So why do you want to remember what you got? Maybe I'm scared to. Scared for someone to keep track of what I copied.
- [32:27]
Nick Loper
Yeah, Like, I was pasting the URL and, you know, then I copy something out and then I. Oh, but it was like, like three Copies ago. I want to paste that thing again. It's just like, it's remarkable how often that use case comes up.
- [32:40]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
That's true. That is true. Like when I'm writing an email. Okay. I wanted to have my podcast, my Apple podcast link copied. Oh. But now the last thing I did was YouTube, so. All right, okay, you've convinced me. Maybe I will add this on. Is that a Chrome extension or it's another, like, separate thing to do as an add on.
- [32:57]
Nick Loper
That's a desktop free, I think free software for PC and then copy Clip, I want to say, is the Mac alternative that people have mentioned. Okay, I do have a Chrome plugin or Chrome extension for you next. And this one is called Magical. This is custom keyboard shortcuts. And so use this all the time. Like if I hit SSS or something like that, I'll, you know, type W HTTP you know, www.site. you get tired of typing this stuff out over and over again, you kind of create these custom keyboard shortcuts for the stuff that you type out all the time or like mm, asterisk or something. That's like the, you know, schedule Once link, like MeetMe. So slash, you know, use this all the time as well. And so that's been really helpful.
- [33:41]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
That's so cool. You know, Nick, I thought I was productive, but you, you were putting me onto a whole different level. I thought I was doing something with Command C, Command V. Right, well, those keyboard shortcuts. Okay, no, I don't have a keyboard shortcut tool.
- [33:57]
Nick Loper
Yeah, it takes, you know, it takes a minute to set up, but you feel like just a productivity ninja when you, you bang these emails out, you know, right away.
- [34:06]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Oh, I like that.
- [34:08]
Nick Loper
And I think there's free. I think they probably have a paid plan too.
- [34:10]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Oh, speaking of that, one thing I forgot to mention about Gmail, I also have a lot of saved templates inside of Gmail, so that saves me time with responding to people. So. Yeah, and I also have that for my va. So my VA has a sub email under side Hustle Pro. And then everything from email pitches to prospective guests to responses to people who pitch us and different things to say to sponsors or all kinds of things. We've made up all kind of templates so that we can just plug and play and not have to keep reinventing the wheel for each email and it speeds up the reply process. Yeah.
- [34:47]
Nick Loper
Oh, yeah, that's great. That's great. For sponsor requests, requests for guest pitch requests like, oh, you can. For the sake of sanity, I'm funneling guest applications through this form. You know, here's the link. And yeah, because you get. It's just the stuff you end up typing out over and over again.
- [35:02]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Right, right. Over and over again. Anything over and over again becomes a template.
- [35:06]
Nick Loper
All right, My next productivity tool is my personal creation. It's called the three Question Journal. Every night it is going to ask you what'd you get done today? Right. Like kind of a mental brain dump of all the things you crossed off your list. It's going to ask you what you're grateful for and it's going to ask you how you're going to win tomorrow. What are your top priorities for the next day? And this is something created last year, I want to say, and has been kind of a daily habit ever since then, and helps me feel more on top of it. Helps me honestly kind of do that, you know, shutdown routine. Like, okay, you know, it's out of here and it's onto the page. And then when I get to work the next day, it's, well, this is what yesterday Nick said was the top priorities. So let's go knock Those out first. First. And so that's been really helpful. 3Q Journal.com is a redirect link, another one of those vanity domains where you can get redirected over there.
- [35:56]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yes, I love that. So I also have a tool that I use for productivity. So I started this back in 2016. It's called the Go Getter Action Plan. And it's essentially my approach to managing my goals for the year. So I break it down, down into 90 day sprints and aka, you know, 12 week sprints, where instead of focusing and looking at the year as like this huge, oh, I gotta get all this done. And I didn't make up the concept of 12 week sprints, but the way I break it down in the Goal Getter Action Planner helps people who don't meet their goal to recalculate. So I think that's the thing I've noticed for my listeners, that's the thing that stops most people is this feeling of beating yourself up. And that's normal. It's part of the process to not get things done. So how do you recalculate, how do you reshift your goals so that you actually get things done? So that has helped me a ton to not waste time on like that mental roller coaster and just say, all right, let's pivot. So similar to you, I look at my calendar. That's where I keep. So once I break the sprints down into quarterly goals by 90 day sprints. Then I break it down into monthlies. And so each night I'm looking at, okay, what did I get done? What do I need to shift around this week? So it just keeps me going one foot at a time. Just keep swimming and you can get more of that over at side hustlepro.co goalgetter.
- [37:24]
Nick Loper
We'll link up the Goal Getter Action Planner. Very cool. More tool talk with Nikayla in just a moment. Including the calendar and team collaboration cat categories, plus my favorite new find of the year that's helping me speed up video creation right after this. Being an entrepreneur and being able to work remotely definitely has its perks. I've recorded podcasts everywhere from Vietnam to Italy, drafted newsletters from Japan, hosted Mastermind meetings from Spain, ended up being the middle of the night to get to US Business hours and outlined courses in Mexico. The common thread of all of these trips, though, is Airbnb. We love being able to get exactly what we're looking for in a place to stay and have a more local experience than staying in some giant hotel chain. And you know me, I'm always thinking about the Next side Hustle idea, the next income stream, right? And one that's at the top of the list is hosting our place on Airbnb while we're traveling. That way the house doesn't have to sit empty. We could use the income to help pay for the trip. And we've heard from several successful Airbnb hosts on the show. And what's interesting is a lot of them still started with almost that exact strategy, renting their place or even a spare room while they're out of town. Taking inspiration from that, you might have an Airbnb right under your nose. In fact, your home might be worth more than you think. You can find out how much@airbnb.com host that's airbnb.com host to find out how much your home is worth. You did mention the calendar. That's our next category of tools here. For me, two tools work in conjunction with the other. First it's Google Calendar, and then the second one is Schedule Once. This is like the booking management link where, you know, somebody wants to book a podcast interview, somebody wants to book a intro call, or you have these different categories set up. We have heard from the AppSumo crew that tidy cal is, you know, a one off one time purchase instead of a annual subscription for schedule once. But you know, Schedule Once is already integrated into a bunch of different Systems including these keyboard shortcuts. So it's the. That's what I have stuck with. But Google Calendar and Schedule Once for really the thing with Google Calendar is like the time blocking and Schedule Once will allow you to do this too. I'm only taking meetings on Mondays and Wednesdays. I want bigger deep work blocks of time the rest of the days.
- [39:44]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yes, I use Google Calendar and Calendly. So Calendly originally I started using that just to have my guests be able to book and see select from from all the options I had on my calendar. And now I use it for everything as well as my VIP coaching calls with like VIP branding or podcasting clients. I use it for quick informational calls when I interview people for to hire them for side Hustle Pro it's all run through Calendly and then of course it syncs with my calendar so they could only schedule when I'm available because I also block off my calendar for various life things or yeah, deep work sessions and all that.
- [40:25]
Nick Loper
Totally. I will, I will hand it to Calendly. Much better looking interface than Schedule Once if you want to care about presentation a little bit more. Calendly is, is the one to go with there.
- [40:35]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Oh yeah, yeah.
- [40:37]
Nick Loper
The next category on our tool list, resources list is for graphics and video. And so you know the, the common one that everybody probably uses at this point is called Canva. This is C A N v. This is YouTube thumbnails. This is digital product like making workbooks in here. This is sometimes custom blog graphics. This is super easy to use and they've added on all these kind of cool, you know, photo editing, image enhancement, AI type of layer. Like really, really powerful. Like that's another one of those where it's like, it's really. I'm just grateful that this exists in the world and makes life easier.
- [41:16]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yes, absolutely. Canva is a one. If you're a side hustler doing any kind creating graphics for your business, you need to be on Canva. I use the Canva for yeah my presentations for webinars for creating quick ebooks and sometimes I even purchase templates on Etsy. So let's say you're not finding what you want inside of Canva. A lot of times you can go onto Etsy and say you know, ebook or you want a new slide deck, AKA presentation slides and then they create a Canva version so you can just once you purchase download it and then upload that template to Canva and start working by customizing it to your brand colors. And I Do that a ton because sometimes I'm just looking for something fresh, whether it's graphics on Instagram. You talked about Instagram growth or anything. I sometimes purchase a template and then move it over to Canva.
- [42:09]
Nick Loper
Yeah, for sure. There's a screen recording tool that I use for online courses, for, for demo videos, for tutorials, for virtual assistants. I use this all the time. It's called Screen Pal. Used to be called Screencast. O Matic. I think there's still a free plan, but super affordable. This would be an alternative to Loom. This is just, I don't know, one that we use almost daily to kind of create that type of process library, type of content that's, that's you know, internal facing to the company, but also external facing content where it's like you want to do a demo of some tool that you're using and put that up on YouTube and it's like really, really helpful to have. And I also use their built in editor for a lot of video tools too. It's like, it's, it's very basic. Like if you are used to After Effects or some like, you know, real official video editing software, you're gonna be like, what the heck am I like. But it's the one that I learned.
- [43:01]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Still use either Loom or quicktime. Quicktime. I've been defaulting to a lot more because Loom has been a little bit glitchy. Sorry, Loom. So I need to check out Screen Pal. Why do you like it more than Loom? Did you ever try Loom?
- [43:16]
Nick Loper
You know, I used Loom up until like the limit of the free plan. And the cool thing about Loom is that it will provide you a transcript of the video where this tool is not. Or at least on the pricing tier that I'm at. I think I'm probably grandfathered in at some low, low rate. But Loom absolutely is a, is a viable alternative too.
- [43:33]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
And similarly I also record tutorials for my team to, you know, just walk through process of how to do something. And if eventually because I've recorded so many, we need to go back in and probably, you know, get transcripts, put those in ChatGPT and update SOPS.
- [43:49]
Nick Loper
Yeah, the other one just for screenshots and actually for like full scroll if you want to capture like the whole website, not just what's visible. I use a chrome extension called awesome Screenshot. And what else is cool about this is you can kind of do real time markup of it where in the editing window you can crop that image Image. You can add circles and arrows and text. And we use that for a lot of, like, product review content on the website where, you know, you point to, you can cash out for gift cards. You kind of highlight that section on the screenshot and I don't know, that's something that ends up getting used quite a bit or just like, even if it's just like, customer support, like, here's what we're seeing on our end. You know, capture the screenshot, send it over.
- [44:29]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
I like that. What's that called again?
- [44:30]
Nick Loper
Awesome. Screenshot is the chrome extension. All right, next tool, video tool that we've been loving this year because it's really, really cool. It's called Pictory. Pictory AI, I want to say this is upload your script. And there's probably, like, different script creation tools that are in there, but for us, our typical use case would be upload the script, upload the voiceover, and then it pulls in hundreds of stock footage clips. Like, it turns this into a really visually compelling type of video. It adds captions.
- [45:02]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Ooh, yes, yes.
- [45:03]
Nick Loper
And some of these videos that we've done have had 10,000 views. Like, they're out there on YouTube making money. And this would have taken hours and hours and hours of, you know, a video editor's time.
- [45:14]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
I love it. Yes.
- [45:16]
Nick Loper
Yeah. This has been a cool addition just to speed up video production process. The bottleneck is still in the scripting, which we've talked about, and working with some ChatGPT prompts. Like, I want to turn this blog post into a compelling video script. Can you help me get from A to B? And it's not quite there yet because it's still me narrating. And we've, you know, experimented around with some AI narration. It's like, ah, it's not quite. Not quite there yet.
- [45:41]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
No, not quite. Not. They're not quite there yet. I've tried. I think it's what, 11 labs?
- [45:46]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [45:46]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
For that. And it's scary how good your voice can be, but by the time you set up everything, there's still some, you know, things to work through. But what I wanted to say about what you just said, the scripting part with Chat GPT, what I found helpful is when you. You really have to approach it. And I got this from my s. My husband. Like, this is like an intern, you know, and so it's going to be a back and forth dialogue. It's not like people think, oh, just give me a list of great prompts. And I sure. I'm sure you don't think that. But a lot of people are like, oh, let me just get the prompts that you got. But actually you're having a conversation. I usually start every experience of writing something and I'm like, hey, gp, how's it going? It's the Kayla here, you know, blah, blah, blah. And then I'm like, here's what I want to do. And then we go back and forth and it gives me the first draft and then I'm like, no, that sounds to this. I give it examples of my writing and I say what I'm trying to do is this. And so it takes a while, Nick, but by the time we go through this process, yeah, we get to a good place and then, then you can take that script and like tweak it to what's or like as you're reading it, of course, adjust it organically. But I, I, I can definitely say I think you can speed up your script process with AI, with chat, GPT or Claude AI. Like check those out because it's been really, really helpful. It's not going to give you the first pass. You're not going to be impressed with. You still have to workshop it like it's a person.
- [47:09]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [47:10]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
An employee.
- [47:11]
Nick Loper
Yeah, that makes sense. And the more, the more you can prime it and you've got enough body of content on the Internet where it knows, it knows who you are. It kind of knows how you would speak and your personality and it's the same thing.
- [47:22]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
But I find it's still faster, even after we've gone through that whole conversation than me like sitting down and having, having to download what I'm thinking and create a script from scratch.
- [47:33]
Nick Loper
Yes, for sure. So I've got a discount code for pictory. It's N SHN20. Like Nick side hustle nation 20. We'll get you 20% off. I think over there. We'll also link that up in the show notes. Really cool tool. I'm going to try and put together kind of a demo video of like our typical use case and share some of the results that, that some of those videos have gotten. It's like, well, some of them are earning views and dollars every day. And it was like, you know, what it will typically do is you know me for the first five or ten seconds. Hey, we're going to talk about the best items to flip for a profit or we're going to talk about side hustles for introvert. I don't know some of these examples where we use these, use this tool. But you know, talking head intro for 3 seconds, 5 seconds and then you know, the rest is kind of pictory generated with those stock footage.
- [48:19]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Right. I love that. And we were talking about this before we started recording how as I was going through your YouTube channel, I'm like, oh, you know what, I, I can do some of these as well because there are lots of little mini things people ask me and I'm like through looking at your channel, realizing I need to do one of these, just quickly explaining how something works or how a side hustler can set up your email list and tag people or you know, that's just shooting out an example. But I love what you do there. So yeah, I, I think that's so smart.
- [48:48]
Nick Loper
Some of that Q and A content has the longest shelf life where some of my best performing videos are like how to keep your Dropbox from taking up your local hard drive storage.
- [48:59]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
I saw that.
- [49:00]
Nick Loper
Yeah, this video is probably 10 years old and it's just, you know, it was probably created with screen pal and it's like here's you know, a two minute video and how to get it done. But it still, it answers the question. So anytime people are asking you questions, I think it's important to make a note of that because that could turn into content for you. Yeah, yeah. All right, real quick, the other one on the graphics and video category is Pexels P E X E L S. This is just, you know, free stock photography where that's where you're sourcing a lot of the images. We've got a deposit photos license or you've got. We bought like a hundred pack off appsumo a few years ago and still are working through those as well. But you know, wherever you can kind of find the image to illustrate what you're talking about, sometimes it's there, sometimes it's Pexels.
- [49:40]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yeah, you know, I actually use Canva for my images these days. I used to use Pexels but nowadays I'm on the pro plan on Canva, so. And oftentimes I'm looking, looking for black women, women of color, just more like niche things. I shouldn't say niche, but I want specific things. And Canva has actually a really good library of images. Even when I'm talking about podcasting, different type of podcast studios, so I use it for that. And when I need other stock photo things like imagery for social, I have some apps that I use for that. Like template is one of them. And Vixer, I've also tried, oh, I.
- [50:17]
Nick Loper
Don'T know Those, we'll link those up too.
- [50:18]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Oh, yeah.
- [50:19]
Nick Loper
Okay. Our next category is team collaboration. And for me, this starts with secure password sharing. For me, that's LastPass. Again, been a customer for years and years. This company is maybe a little bit embattled with, I don't know, security breaches. Anyways, it's been fine for me. It's been good for me.
- [50:36]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
I know, Knock on wood. And same thing with the switching costs. It's like at this point, I don't know, I was sticking with LastPass for now, but yeah, the password breaches have been a little concerning.
- [50:47]
Nick Loper
I don't know where the tipping point was where it's like you had so many different logins to keep track of and it's like, how are you ever going to remember all of this stuff? And so just, you know, offload that mental clutter. It doesn't have to be LastPass, but if you don't have a password manager, like, that's a. That's an absolute must have.
- [51:06]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yes. And for me, the password manager, it wasn't so much like I was forgetting passwords anymore, but once I started working with the team, I was definitely not comfortable giving someone else my password. So whoever invented this concept, thank you. So that I can get them to log in places, but they're not seeing my password.
- [51:26]
Nick Loper
Kind of our next stage of this is, you know, the family share plan mainly in like in case of emergency, is Brynn going to be able to access the stuff that she needs to and you know, without. Because I think it's like, you know, the laptop is like biometric or it's like hope you don't just want to make sure like, you know, in, in one secure location you can unlock everything she needs to unlock. But that's, that's last pass for the team secure password sharing. We have make.com which is, you know, formerly Integromat. This is an automation tool that connects different apps and services in your life. And so an example use case would be if somebody enrolls in one of the courses on teachable make will automatically send their information over to ConvertKit. If somebody buys one of the workbooks, make will make sure that they get appropriately tagged and it automatically triggers that like file delivery email. If the podcast editor uploads a episode to like the final audio folder in Google Drive, it triggers, triggers an email to the show notes writer like, hey, another episode is ready for you to go. You know, listen to and summarize. Here's the link to it. And so it's kind of removes me from that process in a lot of ways and just like, you know, makes it, makes it happen automatically.
- [52:42]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Ooh. So I've used Zapier for that and as we're talking about this, you just gave me an idea, idea of new automations that I need to set up for my team when like, I'm done recording in Riverside, for example. So I, I love that we're having this conversation. Just getting so many new ideas.
- [53:00]
Nick Loper
Yeah, Zapier was using them for a long time and then they wanted to like double or triple the rates. And I was like, really? Guys, like, come, like, you know, come on. And that was one where it's like, yes, there's a learning curve, yes, there's a switching cost. But I didn't have so many automations. It was like we could figure this out. Yeah, I found the support, the make support like pretty well too. And they've got lots of knowledge base articles like if you want to do a specific thing, they're usually pretty helpful on getting that set up. The next one here is Asana. This is, you know, I still have my like pen and paper to do lists. But as the team has grown, as the complexity of the business has grown, despite, you know, trying to stick with the mantra of, you know, simplicity first, Asana has been really helpful for keeping track of tasks and deadlines and due dates. And who's responsible for that.
- [53:50]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
You know, I've used Asana Basecamp Trello and I found that I'm really not into these yet. I don't know what it is. It, it just kind of over complicates it a little bit for me. But I know at some point maybe I'll revisit or someone will make one that I really value vibe with. But right now we, we have our communication via Slack. We're not using a project management tool. I've only used those when I'm usually working with a brand. Right. On giving them deliverables and things like that. So that's when Asana has been most helpful.
- [54:24]
Nick Loper
Yeah, there's a learning curve to all these and the challenge is you open it up and it's blank. Yeah, I know this is going to be super powerful, but I got to figure out how to make it work for me. And it's cool that it's all customizable, but it's like, you know, some level of onboarding or guidance would be, would be helpful for sure. And that's why there's whole businesses built around selling notion templates and, you know, people have done really well with that. All right. I have a virtual assistant service that I've been a customer of for years and this is called okay, Relax, which might be my favorite name for a VA service they do. You know, I'm on my fifth, sixth, seventh assistant through them. But they've all been really reliable for like dedicated, you know, recurring tasks. Early on it was, you know, running reports, installing lead magnets, doing company research, blog post formatting. Like they've been a helpful addition to the team and pretty affordable service too.
- [55:17]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
I also use a VA and not through a service actually through just a referral. And we've been going on, I want to say maybe like almost five years now. So it, yeah, finding a good one, a good person is really priceless.
- [55:33]
Nick Loper
Yeah, keep them, keep them on the team for sure.
- [55:35]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yes.
- [55:35]
Nick Loper
The other kind of agency service or productized service that helps out on the website side of things is called zenwp. And I consider this kind of my on call, on demand website insurance where if something breaks with WordPress or you want to make an adjustment or. But they help out with all that stuff especially instrumentl. During the last redesign refresh of the site. I don't. It's kind of painful. It's like there's a lot of months where like I don't bother them at all and it's like, well, there was my monthly fee down the drain. But when you do have something that comes up and that's why it's kind of like the insurance policy, if something breaks, you know, you have somebody on your team who can, can jump in.
- [56:09]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
I like that I formally would just go to like my host customer service, but that is a good investment.
- [56:16]
Nick Loper
Okay. Next under team collaboration and communication is Mint Mobile who has been a sponsor on the show. This is the affordable wireless service provider. I've been a customer since 2019. Don't do a lot of phone, you know, direct phone calls. I use Google Voice as well for some business calls. But this is really handy to have at an affordable rate.
- [56:35]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
So you use this for yourself service overall?
- [56:38]
Nick Loper
Yes.
- [56:39]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Okay. So I, yeah, I do have a Google Voice as well and then outside of that, Verizon is who I use.
- [56:45]
Nick Loper
Yeah. And as the business grows, we've had OpenPhone as a sponsor on the show, like just under different use cases. At a certain point you kind of outgrow your, you outgrow your personal cell phone and you got to route things to different ways and you want to, especially if you're doing different marketing channels and you want to make sure. What channel is working? Well, I want to have a dedicated phone number for that and everything. But Mint Mobile has been my wireless provider and I'll just include that on this list because as their slogan says, friends don't let friends overpay for wireless. The other team collaboration tool that I am in all day, every day is Google Drive. And this is sharing blog articles. This is sharing like production docs for different episodes. It is kind of home base for a lot of different files and reports and templates is where we house our process library for, you know, all the things that are going on inside Hustle Nation. I was kind of a latecomer. I was on, you know, using Dropbox for a long time. But the functionality with Google Drive is a whole lot better. Even use it for collecting survey responses, job applications, and then sharing files amongst people on the team.
- [57:52]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yeah, I use both. So primarily Google Drive for team related files, but Dropbox for really large files like Episodes. All the backups and things like that.
- [58:02]
Nick Loper
Yeah, it's amazing how affordable extra gigabytes of storage are just having that backup. And I think there's a WordPress plugin. I should probably look up which one it is. But the host WPX takes data daily backups of the site. But we also like a little bit of redundancy wouldn't hurt, you know, since that is, you know, the whole base of bread and butter. And I think that gets backed up to Google Drive daily or weekly.
- [58:24]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Oh, interesting.
- [58:25]
Nick Loper
All right, we're onto the podcasting section now. And the first is. Well, how do you. There's one question. Well, how do you record remote interviews? And we're recording this on Riverside Riverside fm. This is a browser based recording tool that allows for remote interviews. It takes I think really clean audio. It records video, it records each side independently. So. So if there's voiceover IP lags, you know, theoretically it's got a good backup on each individual's local hard drive. It's been probably a year and a half using Riverside. Sometimes we have some technical challenges, but overall it's been pretty reliable.
- [58:59]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Same here. I've been using Riverside now, I want to say maybe since 2021 and it has been very reliable. I love Riverside. I'm actually creating, it's almost live of course with them called the Ultimate Guide to Video Podcasting. So when it's live, you'll go over to side hustlepro.co video podcasting. All right. And I'm just going through basically, yeah, everything like my at home studio in my closet and why it's so seamless. I love it because I. I love virtual podcasting. I am not ready to go into a studio every single time I do an episode yet. And I'm able to see the guests. They can join easily. They don't have to log into anything. And I can see their equipment to make sure, you know, their sound is okay, that the recording is uploaded. And I just think it's so, so smart and adaptive.
- [59:49]
Nick Loper
Yeah. A couple recent guests were local and it was like, well, I guess. I guess we could have recorded this in person, but, like, no, I'm not set up for that. Like, let's just, you know, stick with the process, stick with the system here. I also record a direct backup into Audacity, and that ends up being in the track that, you know, we end up using from my side of the audio. This is audio editing too. Like, where I can record the ads, ad reads, and the commercials and just do that directly.
- [60:15]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
I've been doing everything in Riverside. Like, my ad reads course reads everything these days. Yeah.
- [60:22]
Nick Loper
Okay. It's become really powerful. Like, they have, like, these AI snippets that they'll generate. It does transcriptions, which, you know, allows us to cancel our subscription to the other transcript tool. There's. There's been some consolidation, some tool swap, like trying to trim down the commitment of monthly subscriptions.
- [60:39]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yes. It's taken over a lot. Like you said, like show notes. Before, my social media manager was writing those manually, and now we have, like, a base to start with, and then we customize it so it's just sped up our processes so we can then focus on other big picture items.
- [60:57]
Nick Loper
Yeah. There is another transcription editing tool that we do keep on the payroll, and that is Descript, and primarily for video editing. And when I first use it, I think Joe from Stacking Benjamins was the first one to be like, you gotta try. This is your first experience editing video by editing text. You know, this is where the conversation went off the rails. We're gonna just strike that out of the transcript and it deletes that section of the video. You're like, this is like magic.
- [61:23]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Magic.
- [61:24]
Nick Loper
And it makes it so much easier for video editing. If you have an interview, if you have even just a talking head type of video where you wanna. It'll do the transcript description and then you can start editing it that way. Use that for first pass. And my video editor uses that to create the video version of podcast.
- [61:40]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yes. I love that, actually, about Riverside. But I also do have Descript, because I still like it as a video editor for non podcast things when I just quickly want to upload something and do some editing.
- [61:52]
Nick Loper
Yeah, One cool use case was we talked about 11 labs for their professional voiceover. Upload hours of your audio and it comes back pretty, pretty good actually. Well, Descript has something similar called Overdub and the use case for me, we were traveling, didn't bring the podcast set up, didn't bring the microphone with me and they said, oh, the advertiser requested a change from this script that you recorded to this script and it was like one line was different or just a few words were different. It's like, oh, let me try, let me punch this into descript Overdub. And it's like, okay for just a few seconds of audio, nobody would know the difference. That was really cool. Didn't have to, you know, do a full setup and recording and re upload and like a whole all this other nonsense. So definitely a cool tool to have in your tool belt. As far as the editing of the show itself, like the, you know, after recording production side, my editing service has been podcast fast track since 2016, like since like right before my oldest son was born. And it's been a big net time saver and you know, focus your energy on what you're most excited about. Creating the content, connecting with awesome people. Like the looking at those little waveforms for the first three years of the show, show, it's like, ah, there's got to be somebody. And on top of that, like I just didn't know how to do it very well and like, yeah, so they, they help out with all that.
- [63:08]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Same boat, same boat. I, I also outsource editing and it's just never something I loved. I use well actually my editor pitched me back in 2016 and we've been working together ever since. Longest team member that is still crazy to think about. Chris from Pod Shaper.
- [63:25]
Nick Loper
Very nice. Yeah, there is something to that where if maybe that's the side hustle opportunity if you can figure out audio editing and maybe you use some of these AI powered tools, you get a client that sticks around if they're going to keep doing the show. That's a very sticky customer. You know, long, long, long, long lifetime value.
- [63:40]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yeah, exactly. And start pitching people. Don't be afraid. Like don't just wait for them to come to your website. Look, look for podcasters. Podcasters are always looking for, you know, a good deal. So you know, work on your pitch.
- [63:53]
Nick Loper
All right, we'll link up a pod chaser as well. And then last one in the podcasting category is Megaphone. This is the new or new ish within the last year or so media host for the show. This is Spotify owned or Spotify powered. That allows for dynamic ad insertion across the whole catalog. Seems to be the direction that the industry was going. And that's been another good addition or another good shift over, over to Megaphone. Definitely more expensive than what I was paying with Libsyn, which is. Which is noticeable. But again, the ROI is definitely there.
- [64:22]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yes, I am on the Acast podcast network, so I'm on Acast platform, which also seamless, allows for dynamic insertion. I believe they might have been the first ones to do that for independent podcasters. For that. I was on Libsyn for a long time and love Libsyn as well. Super user friendly. The team customer support was always very, very responsive. So I actually have a code for Lipsyn Hustle Pro if you want to try it out, because it's the first month and a half free.
- [64:51]
Nick Loper
Very nice. We'll link that up. Yeah, Libsyn was absolutely awesome for the first, you know, probably 10 years at the show. It's just again, one of those bills that comes up every month and you're like, I am getting such an amazing deal. You know, it's similar to the web hosting. We're like, yes.
- [65:05]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yeah, no brainer. Yeah.
- [65:07]
Nick Loper
I was really like, I had no idea. Like, media. You need a media host.
- [65:11]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
What?
- [65:11]
Nick Loper
I thought itunes, you know, in the early days, maybe itunes host. I didn't even think about it. And it was 15 bucks a month, you know, starting out, and had it been 25 or 30, like, legitimately, the show might not exist. Like, what am I, what am I committing myself to? I just have to keep paying, paying this for forever. And, you know, over time it's like, oh, no, no, no. This is a very, very low cost to pay to be able to reach thousands and thousands of people. Right? Yeah. One really important point that I should have mentioned at the top of the show is that neither of us started here with, you know, dozens of different tools and monthly subscriptions. Like, it started off doing the editing ourselves. We started off doing the graphics ourselves, you know, very free, very cheap, like trying to do the, you know, the minimum viable product and then layering bring on complexity and cost in team members as time has gone on, because it may be intimidating. You start doing the math in your head of like, well, this is an annual subscription, this is a monthly subscription. And it might sound intimidating, but it's like no, no, no. We've added that cost and complexity as the businesses have grown.
- [66:15]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yeah, exactly.
- [66:17]
Nick Loper
Now we've got the money category, which I think is our last one here. If not the last, but maybe one of the last. The new, to me, bookkeeping software, you know, Fintech and Plaid integrations have opened bunch of these different services. And one of the cool ones that I found and actually made the switch for bookkeeping this year was to Kick. I think it's Kik Co. Oh, my gosh.
- [66:39]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
I literally just saw an email about them and want to try them. So tell me about your experience.
- [66:43]
Nick Loper
Yeah, so this is, you know, syncs with all your different accounts and it kind of gives you that, you know, real time, you know, picture, but also the monthly snapshot of income and expenses and probably will save a thousand, fifteen hundred bucks a year compared to the other thing. And the cool thing is, like, if you don't have much experience, expenses, it's actually free. And so if you have less than, I want to say, 25, you know, depending on when you're listening to this and you know, it's a fintech startup, so, like, your plans change all the time, but if you have less than 15 or $25,000 in annual expenses, I think you could actually use it for free. And it's really cool. And then they have annual plans on top of that. I was the person who kept bookkeeping as one of my tasks way too long. Way too long. Because I was that weird person who got that little dope dopamine hit of logging the income on the spreadsheet, like, almost in real time. Like, what a colossal waste of energy. Even though it felt good.
- [67:35]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Even though it felt good and still missing stuff. Like, we're not accountants. We're missing stuff we don't know. Other things we could like. That's what I saw with that Kik does that intrigued me because it's like, all right, they're catching things that you might not realize. And back to our earlier conversation about the teachable team. So it's founded by another teachable alum. So that's the other one I was talking about. So you have. Carrie and Kick are both teachable alum, founded business.
- [68:02]
Nick Loper
Oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Conrad, totally. Yes. But no, it's. It's pretty slick. Really cool interface that you can. What. What bothered me about my old bookkeeping solution was that you had to message your bookkeeper if you wanted to. Like, if something got miscategorized, like, why on earth do they not just have like.
- [68:17]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm struggling with right now. I don't like any of the ones I've tried and I'm like, I need to find a better, more automated, more intelligent solution.
- [68:29]
Nick Loper
Yeah. I was like, why? How come they couldn't just put a little drop down menu or recategorize it? And I was like, you got to message them and it takes three weeks for them to reply. I was like, really guys? The whole pitch was like AI, intelligent software plus human. If you're not going to have the human part, what's even the point of this, right?
- [68:46]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
And I like, like the, a nice interface, like I am an aesthetic person. I need a nice interface that I can drag drop. And then I've also tried the human book keeper thing and I don't like like you going off into the dark whipping off spreadsheets then coming back to me with a spreadsheet that I don't really like how, like I don't really like how you've organized information. So I'm still working through this process, Nick, so I'm gonna give it a try.
- [69:09]
Nick Loper
And then the other one, so that's on the business side. The one that I really like on the personal side is Monarch. And this is your personal net worth dashboard. This is monthly income and expenses. This is, you know, historical, you know, performance and you know, the, you know, stock market at the time of this recording has been on a year long tear. So of course like it's, it's rewarding to log in and see that net worth number go up. But it's, it's a kind of a cool interface as well with a customizable dashboard and you track all the personal side of things. And that's something that my wife and I both have access to where we can kind of get a, get that snapshot or get that picture of the personal finances.
- [69:45]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Oh, I like that. Another one I'm taking note of.
- [69:47]
Nick Loper
Yeah, that one has been cool and a couple guests have mentioned it too. And I don't know, maybe there's a business, I don't know, maybe you could use it for business too. But that's on the personal side. And then finally on the affiliate tracking side, affiliate income tracking side, I've been using a tool called Affluent, which pulls in, I think it got bought by Impact, one of the affiliate networks, but it pulls in data from Impact, from Commission Junctions, from Racketam, from all these different affiliate networks and kind of gives you a daily snapshot of your affiliate earnings and it sends you an email every day which is always nice to get and lately that number has been going down. It's like well shoot. But it kind of gives, it gives visibility to it. My only beat because I really like that and it saves time for month end reporting of like where did the income come from? How did these links perform? The only downside is there's no ThriveCart integration. There's no SamCart integration where it's like it doesn't, it doesn't give you 100% picture of what happened on the affiliate side but it probably has 60, 70%.
- [70:46]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
I'll look into that once. That's the thing I'm looking for too with the bookkeeping. It is so annoying to have all these different things where when you know your start out as you start out as a side hustler, like money's coming from different places, Stripe, PayPal, you know, all these different integrations and I wish someone would just make an overall that just takes at all and I don't have to like be uploading spreadsheets from different places or also looking at this data in addition to this website's data. It's AI solution is needed.
- [71:18]
Nick Loper
Yeah. Now if I get, if I'm able to get Lasso's performance tool working, I may be able to hit the cancel button on this affluent tool because I think there's some overlap in the functionality there. But that's it. I think we threw out 40 or 50 different tools resources for you.
- [71:34]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
That's it. Wow.
- [71:35]
Nick Loper
Are there any favorites that come to mind that people ought to know about?
- [71:39]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
One last thing I'll add is just social media management. So I like using a tool called later right now to schedule out posts. Well, my social media manager schedules out posts across the different social media side. Hustle Pro, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn channels and we use Buffer for LinkedIn.
- [71:56]
Nick Loper
Oh okay. What was the first one?
- [71:57]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
It's called later. Just L A T E R later dot com.
- [72:01]
Nick Loper
Awesome. We'll add those in to the list. Well, what you excited about these days? What kind of projects have you got going on? I know you're always got got different things following from afar and curious to see what's coming up.
- [72:12]
Nikayla Matthews Okome
Oh yes I am. I'm excited about this Riverside Video podcasting course. Especially after our conversation. I'm excited to get that out there and have everyone see how easy it can be to podcast right from home. Like you don't need this huge fancy setup or studio and so I'm excited to get that out into the world. And also if people want to continue learning from for me and growing their podcast into actual revenue, then I'm excited for you to learn more about Podcast Moguls, which is my course and also Mastermind group where we are independent podcasters who have scaled our podcast into repeatable revenue through various measures. So we've done we've have people who work with brands but also people who have used their podcast as a funnel for their own business and to get more clients. So you can find out all about that over at side Hustle Pro Co. For Podcast moguls, it's side HustlePro Co podcast moguls. And like I said, once the Riverside course is live, it will be over at Side HustlePro Co VideoPodcasting.
- [73:16]
Nick Loper
I love it in partnership with Riverside. Well now Nikayla definitely knows a thing or two about podcasting. Haven't done it for years and years. 400 episodes of the side Hustle Hustle Pro podcast. Go check it out and you won't be disappointed there. As for the links to all the resources mentioned, definitely check out the show notes for this episode. You can hit the link in the episode description. It'll get over there. I'll toss out a pretty link again. Side hustlenation.com Nikayla or/resources both will get you over to the show notes for this page. Big thanks to Nikayla for sharing her insight. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit up side hustlenation.com deals for all the latest on offers from our sponsors in one place. Thanks again for supporting the advertisers that support the show. Really does make a difference. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.