Productivity 101

There’s a dumb question people always throw around.

“What’s your superpower?”

There’s a chance that I think this question is dumb simply because I got given a crappy superpower.

Mine is:

The willingness to put in a lot of research + an oversensitive BS detector that helps discover the best tools and products for the price.

I told you it was a crappy superpower.

This list below are the products I use, and why I chose them over others. They aren’t the cheapest, nor are they the most expensive. They are awesome products that are priced well.

Of course some of these are referral links.

Automation

I can’t not start with automation.

• Zapier. Loads of apps. Simple to use.

• Integromat. Incredibly powerful. Compared to Zapier it’s harder to learn, but cheaper.

• AirTable. A place to store information that’s better than Google Sheets in many ways

Productivity

• TextExpander for spending less time typing

• AirTable for content planning, link building and other things you’d normally do in a spreadsheet

• Calendly for bookings. The UI for the person booking is still second to none.

• 1Password for password management

• Sanebox is also great for automatically filtering out emails that don’t need to be in your inbox

• FollowUpThen for automatic reminders if people don’t reply to your emails

• Loom for recording videos for my team, students and anyone really

• Notion for note taking, lists and storing all the things I write.

• ClickUp for task management, although I’m looking to switch away

• Miro for diagramming. It does the job but I’m not married to it.

• Online storage with Google Drive. It’s included with our email and it does the job.

• Slack for communication. I still like it better than alternatives

• Xero for bookkeeping

Marketing & Sales

• Active Campaign for email marketing & CRM. It has the best automation capability out of any of them, and if it isn’t obvious, I’m big on automation. The email editor is trash though. Really hoping they fix it soon.

• ConvertBox is the best opt in tool I’ve ever used and it’s a one time fee! Watch my review

• Revue for weekly curated newsletters. The workflow is ace compared with all others I’ve tried. It’s free now too. Video

• Intercom for support of our SaaS. It’s just nicer and cleaner than other options. It’s also expensive and not without issues.

• Buffer for social scheduling. It’s so, so simple. I like that.

• Better Proposals for…….. proposals. It’s simple and works.

• Ahrefs for SEO & research. Mangools if you don’t have the budget for ahrefs

• Rebrandly for link redirects. Most links on this page go through Rebrandly

Learning and coaching

• GrowthMentor for jumping on calls with amazing mentors

• Feedly for finding and curating posts for social and newsletters

Fun

• Automated lighting by Philips Hue, because it’s faster, more reliable and has more apps etc than others. Good for notifications.