Heads In Beds Show - The Tools We Use To Increase Productivity And Get More Done In Less Time

Episode Date: March 9, 2023

In this "experiment" episode, we dive into the tools that we both use on a daily basis to be more productive and get more done for our clients. Conrad shares the tool he uses 30 times a day and Paul laughs at the absurdity of Conrad's obsessions. ⭐️ Links & Show NotesPaul Manzey Conrad O'ConnellUnlock the Power of Search AdsAhrefsSemrushDetailed SEO PluginChrome Sublime TextText ExpanderColorslurpPixelmator ProCanvaAlfred AppDescriptGoogle Ads Editor1PasswordBasecampAirtableFreshbooksGTMClarityKeywords EverywhereTag Assistant ChatGPT🔗 Connect With BuildUp BookingsWebsiteFacebook PageInstagramTwitter🚀 About BuildUp BookingsBuildUp Bookings is a team of creative, problem solvers made to drive you more traffic, direct bookings and results for your accommodations brand. Reach out to us for help on search, social and email marketing for your vacation rental brand.

Welcome to the Heads and Beds show where we teach you how to get more properties, earn more revenue per property, and increase your occupancy. I'm your co-host Conrad. And I'm your co-host Paul. Hello everyone and welcome back to the Heads and Beds show. I thought I'd open a little bit differently today, but how are you doing today, Paul? I am doing fantastic. We're in March. I think it feels like spring in some places of the country. It feels like winter in the West

Coast, it feels. So I don't feel unique in having snow in Minnesota anymore when we're getting it in California. So I guess my weather rant doesn't need to be quite as expansive as it usually is, but the nod. It's a beautiful start to the week. What about you, Conrad? How conrad how are you doing this week yeah pretty good i won't mention that it was 81 degrees on here on saturday yeah yeah to do that so i won't do no maybe we'll take it a different direction do you have any spring break plans coming up here in a few weeks anything family or anything like that yeah it is with the vacation in february that's our spring break and it is i'm trying to think when my snowbird parents come up there i think they've got about a month and a half left, so they won't probably catch spring break.

It's I don't know. I don't know exactly what the preschooler had, what my preschooler has for any time off in the next month. I think. Yeah, I think they had a lot of them last month. It feels like when I look at the little sheet that they bring home every day. So I don't think we have a lot. We'll enjoy some basketball coming up for March Madness, certainly.

And I think that's probably going to be it. What about you? Any fun plans for spring break for you? Yeah, we'll see. We're actually closing on our old house. I think we talked about this on a previous episode, maybe, or maybe I've just talked about it so much. It came up on a previous conversation.

But yeah, we're closing on our old house this week. We'll be done with that. And there was some financial reward. There was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow there so that'll be good weekend maybe we'll take a little trip with it we'll see i'm waiting though for the check to hit i'm not going to count it don't count your chickens before they hatch sort of thing so yeah i was curious what folks in minnesota farming communities do in spring break i figured it was like putting corn seeds into starter pretty it is i think it all depends on when it falls i think most people do

and with the i think i've mentioned this before with you i think a lot of the twins fans go down to spring training they'll go down to southern florida to where we were that fort myers area catch a twins game or two it always feels like that's a direction everybody goes down to florida some people go down to arizona too but i always feel like minnesota kind of reroutes down to florida southern florida northern florida wherever it is, you usually find a spot down there. So yeah. Yeah. Nice.

Speaking of things that reroute, we're going to reroute this segment into Marketing Minute. Let's talk a little bit about you dug into some things on these Google Live events. I'm not one to typically always watch these, but I do like the summaries. I think you found a decent summary. Maybe break it down for the listeners. What was the event? What kind of was the goal of it? And then what were some of your key takeaways from some of the events that Google had? I think it was last week or week before.

Yeah, it is. It was search ads week. Usually they do the Google marketing live. That's their big annual in-person meeting. They get all the Googlers in one spot and they have some pretty good keynotes. I usually like listening to it. I like listening to it live because it feels like you're getting it all in real time. Now, it's always interesting to assess where those changes happen because they'll announce them in April, May, and maybe in November, December, we start to see some of those rolling out. So it is, I think it gives you the forecast of what's going to be happening. This one being specifically for search ads, I thought that there were definitely some good insights as they are rolling out some new features. We've touched on Performance Max, some of the updates they're making there.

That seems to be one of the big areas that they're really trying to focus on getting better performance out of making sure there's full insights into how they're performing, how you can make some changes, how you can help them perform better. But I think the biggest takeaway is there was a pretty substantial best practices playbook, about 20 pages. So that's something that anybody, I think we can put that in the show notes here, but anybody who's looking for kind of the full primer of what was talked about from how to get, how to use more custom audience, how to use more of the recommendations that maybe Google isn't pushing as hard on for performance purposes, that maybe it's just because they want things to work properly. I don't know.

I think that's always the question you have to ask when you're looking at some of these suggestions or recommendations from Google. And we talk about it often. Is it for the benefit of the advertiser? Is it for the benefit of the advertiser? Is it for the benefit of Google? For the most part, I think most of this is for the advertiser and helping to perform better in Google. But I think ultimately it's a double-edged sword

where if you're performing better, there's a higher likelihood you're going to spend more on Google. And I think it's always beneficial to at least take a look and see. There are some great webinars in there as well. A couple of five-minute 10 minute, 15 minute webinars, just talking about some of the same things that we talk about on a daily, weekly basis here, but always good to see the latest and the greatest from Google because when

our lives revolve primarily around, you know, what we can get out of Google, we want to know how to get the most out of it there. Yeah, no, that's good to hear. Definitely. I think throwing a link in the show notes is appropriate so people can dig in on their own time. Was there anything you saw that this is my frame on this one, I go and consume content from Google, I share your obvious, obvious guarded skepticism, maybe a touch with are they really but ultimately, a lot of things that they've added over the past few years, you've had to pick and

choose what makes sense. But a lot of the stuff they've added has improved performance in some cases. So I can't sit here and just be anti Google, that would be inappropriate for me to do that. But was there anything that stuck out to you that was like, that is something that I think I can actually implement that's going to help me save time or effort or energy or money or all the above? I think what they started to do is they started talking about AI, they obviously they've been talking about AI, to a lesser degree, not saying AI up to this point and almost everything they do, but they always use the term machine learning. That's exactly, this is the first, this is really the first time I would say that they've transitioned from machine learning to AI.

And it's all based on the algorithm. It's all that, but really thinking about, I'm just looking at one of the, one of the course titles on how to think about search differently with an A power, AI powered search solutions of today. I think that is something that specifically, it was high level this time around and for the search ads week, I would anticipate there will be probably a barred demonstration when they do marketing live in April or whenever they're doing that or May. I would say there's going to be more functionality related to AI built into that demo. But that's when I'm anticipating more of the direct competition to chat GPT open AI really being released. I think they're going to work really hard for the next month and a half, two months. Try not to

let too many of the cats out of the bag. And then I think they'll do a big rollout. It is, it's timing wise, it's appropriate for what they usually do this time of year. I think they've just, they're probably being forced into having more of these conversations a little earlier based on what Microsoft is doing. So I think that's really going to be the key is where does that barred side of things go? Where does the AI discussion go in Google? And how is that built into the ads? Delivery, I think is probably the best way to do it to talk about it because i have seen some interesting i would say just ux screenshots ui screenshots from bing as those ads are coming through and how those ads are being put into the open a open ai

chat gpt side of things so i'm also interested to see once we start seeing some examples of how that's layered in on the Google side. Yeah, it's we should have a game like take a shot every time we don't mention AI on a podcast. Or it's like we need one of those signs like behind us, like it has been zero days since we've in a client meeting or on this podcast. But it's it was actually interesting. I saw an article the other day that there's actually a faction inside of Google that's telling the Google leadership and things like that. Like a language learning model is not replacement for search, especially when it comes to like

facts and things like that. Now, I saw another interesting thing about the Bing demo, whereas someone I've seen these demos, right? Give Bing a PDF document. Did you see this one? And then ask Bing to summarize the PDF document. I don't know if you saw those demos. Not a PDF.

No, I haven't seen it. It's very impressive. So they give it this like long 1099 or one of these are really long. That's summarize the PDF document. I don't know if you saw those demos. Not a PDF. No, I haven't seen it. It's very impressive. So they give it this like long 1099 or one of these are really long. That's probably the wrong thing. I'm sorry, like a K1 or K2 or something like that. Obviously you can tell I don't buy individual stocks very often, but it's like the summary of the,

it's all legal and it's written from like the company's point of view. Here's our business operations. Here's what's going on, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And basically they went in, entered in the PDF into Bing. They gave it the text or whatever and said, summarize this PDF. And the summary was literally making numbers up, it read something wrong, where like interpreted a page wrong or

something. And it was like, this business did $5.1 million this quarter in annual profit. And it was like, that wasn't true, basically, this faction side of Google that's anti barred and all that kind of stuff. And like anti this new approach is basically saying we can't be like the once we summarize the content, we then are responsible for that content in some respect to so like, even if we get it from what we perceive to be a legitimate source, like you can put a lot of questionable queries into Google, and they catch a lot of them. But every once in a while, you'll get back stuff that's like, supports your whatever crazy conspiracy theory you might want to have. And it's like a feedback loop. So I thought it was interesting that there's actually I don't know how large the group is, but I think this was

on the information or something like that, which is, I believe is a legitimate source of information that they were talking about that, that they had some group that was like, no, this can't be how we do search going forward. And the way Bing's doing it, I think makes more sense where they're taking like a real-time index and then they're going against that. And then they're running the AI against it and summarizing. So it saves you time. I don't know, though, is that like a huge breakthrough, though, when you like it looks cool right now. But is that something where, again, from a search perspective, if you want to know who's the best vacation rental company in XYZ, to bring it back to our topic, our podcast, I just don't know if that's really what people are looking for, or if they

really just enjoyed the fact that they can see a list of links and then get more information there. I don't know, there's something to be said for like, where they're going to go with it. But it's I don't think this is black and white, as some people are making it out to be that like, right, all search is gone, or that all search has been changed forever. I think a lot of search hasn't been changed at all at this moment in time, and we'll see how things progress. And then a lot of search has changed quite a bit. But this has been the case for some time. This was always the example that I would go back to how old is X and I always used to use Trump, like how old is Donald Trump in the Google and it gives you you the one box. And that's just been those types of answers has been here for what,

half a decade now or something like that. So that type of search, I feel is over if that was like your way that you were making traffic to your website. And in our example, I could think of things that we do, what's the best beach or what are the best restaurants and all that kind of stuff. So that AI, I'm more on that line of thinking that it's like, that could be gobbled up a little bit quicker, that type of content. But how is AI going to gobble up and know exactly what type of property you want, unless you give it a ton of like input parameters, which you may as well just go to the website and like, you know, I want a three bedroom, two bath in Naples, Florida, that sort of thing. So I'm struggling to put all the pieces together right now, as far as

like large shifts, but small shifts, I definitely can see how it's going to impact us. I just think it's more of a tool. I still feel that way. I've been using it a lot more lately. And I think it's like in a little assistant, it's like a little writing assistant that you have next to you, which that doesn't replace search in my mind at all. That replaces like a low paid content writer or like a low paid research assistant or something like that. So right. Interesting. I think that's, I think it really, that's like, it's a conversation piece for some people. I just, I think, I think it creates more zero click searches. I think, I think you get the answers there instead of going to results.

I think organic results. Yeah. There's a huge question as to what organic results are going to be at the end of this year as in there were three years down the road, five years down the road, but we've already seen the trend away from a click actually going to a website, whether that's ads. You see the ad numbers trending down. And you know that people are either they're advertising less or Google's serving up fewer

ad clicks. So are those answers now just found right in the chat, in the search results page as opposed to going there? Yeah. Yeah. I think it depends on the query. That's like if someone were to come to me and say, like, you know, as AI, the search language tools are going to replace search, I'd be like, show me a keyword, like, give me an example. And

if they give me stuff like that, I'm like, okay, fine. Like, how old is Donald Trump is a dead search term, if you want to know it, that's been a dead search term. Like, even if you rank number one for that a year ago, would you get like a 2% click through rate just to people were like, curious about Oh, maybe where was he born or this and that? I don't know. I'm just like I said, I just think a lot of people want to say things to make it seem like they're right. And I just think this polarization that we're in this is like a larger commentary. But we're in like a polarized environment where if you pick this side or that side, you get more attention. And no like shades of gray or like binary non binary thinking is really accepted with regards to these tools. I don't know,

I'm using them. I'm enjoying using them. I think they're very valuable. ChatGPT being the one that obviously we've talked about the most that I do have now a pro subscription to. So we'll see how long that lasts. I just don't think it's going to replace search, not broadly, maybe like narrowly. I think so. So we'll see how it goes. We're going in a different direction today over this episode. So I don't know we need feedback on this one. So I'll say that early until the end to say that if people like this kind of stuff. So we are going down the path of productivity, like on computers. And I can just share I pitched this topic to Paul, and I wasn't sure if he was gonna take it up. But he said, let's give it a crack and see what happens. So I'll share the origin of where I got this idea from. So I was doing a

presentation at the VR mastered events, Alana Schroeder and Tyane Marsing put these on pre COVID. So they haven't been running since then, unfortunately. Maybe they'll bring them back at some point. I don't know. I haven't talked to those ladies about this in some time. But anyways, and they were mostly for smaller managers and hosts and things like that. So it was a different crowd that I feel like I was interacting with when I was at these events. And I like going to them, by the way.

I had a great time. I did two of them. Two of the three, I missed one just for personal reasons. And at one point, there was like a little bit of time before my presentation. I got up there, I plugged in my computer and I was doing something where someone had asked me really quickly to answer a question. And I launched like a, I launched Chrome. I did a search.

I went in, I did like a summary of something. I did a word count and then I pasted it back into a notepad tool. Like Sublime Text is my notepad of choice. And the person was like, oh, like you really know how to use the computer. And I kind of laughed a little bit. I'm like, yes, I do know how to use the computer. I use it whatever nine hours a day, it feels like six days a week. So yeah, I know how to use the computer. And I kind of laughed a little bit. I'm like, yes, I do know how to use the computer. I use it whatever nine hours a day, it feels like six days a week. So yeah, I know how to use it pretty well. But I was realizing that when I look over

someone's shoulder, whether it's like in person at that event, or now virtually in the zoom world, like a lot of people, I just think don't maximize the tool they have in front of them right now, like the actual computer that you work on. I think it, it actually has a lot to do with like your success in some respect with your vacation rental business, like being able to do things faster or more efficiently ties into from a second ago talking about chat, what I can do for you. But even just like being able to like manipulate applications or do things faster, like I think the delta between an okay user and like a power user of just a computer like day to day, over a month or a year, that person is going to make so much more progress if they know how to use the tool properly. So I thought I'd take a swing at like explaining what the tools

are that I use and why I use them. And I'll try to not go crazy if you're like new to this, and you're haven't really done this stuff. I'll try not to go crazy until Apple script on keyboard maestro. That's like insanity. That's where you get in the stage where like you're tinkering just the tinker, you're not really taking any time at all. It's not productivity at all. But I'll try to stick to things that I think have a real use case and things that I've recommended even to clients over the years, textpander being a good one, and drive through it. No, I have a very Mac slant. I think you have a very PC slant when it comes to like actual computer tools. But then we're going to talk broadly about like marketing tools and

Ahrefs, SEMrush, things like that. So where do you want to start? We could start anywhere. But I guess I'm curious, is there like a piece that you think would be the top few things that you'd want people to have? I think this is your topic, You run with it a little bit. I'll pop in where I can there and I think we'll be in good shape there. Okay, so I'm going to start with the apps that I use to actually that launch at startup. So these are the apps that I use that as soon as the computer actually starts up, I was off, I reboot it. Here's the ones that start right away. Browser wise, nothing interesting there, right? Chrome is my browser of choice. I don't really think that makes a huge difference. I think the only benefit of using Chrome is that it has all the extensions I use.

Maybe we'll talk about extensions in a second, at least one that I think are productivity boosting at least. So that one's there. I also launch at startup. I typically launch my like, I mentioned a second ago, like a notepad like tool.

So I love just having like very quick access to being able to write down my text. So Sublime Text is like my tool of choice for that. It is an actual like programming ID, like a text editor, like you could edit code inside of Sublime Text. That is not what I for that. It is an actual like programming IDE, like a text editor. Like you could edit code inside of Sublime Text. That is not what I'm doing. 99.9% of the time, I'm usually just opening it to write things down.

But I find it's very quick. You could do this with a million things. I used to use Apple Notes because it syncs across laptop and desktop or your iPhone and your laptop and things like that. I just find Sublime is faster. And just the fact that you like open it and instantly it's available. I like that. So that's one that I have a startup.

Keyboard maestro. We'll come back to that one because there's a lot to say on that. Probably a whole 50 episodes we can do on that. I'm going to call this an anti productivity one. The one next Slack launches automatically, which is not a productivity tool at all. By the way, I could do a Slack rant right now. I'm in a Slack. We're in Slack together, obviously, because the way we got connected.

But I am anti Slack when it comes to build up bookings. So the reason for that is that I think Slack is an all day distraction, or what does Jason Fried call it an all day agenda with no meetings, your entire company participates, and there's no to do list on the backside of it. So I do not like Slack, but I do clients that pay me money. So Slack does open a launch. But I believe Slack is the anti productivity tool. And the best thing for you to do with Slack, if you can, is number one, avoid it. And if you can't avoid it, I think it's to try to guardrail it in and like, all right, I'm going to do it during this time and this time and things like that.

But we use Basecamp for our project management. And there's a chat function inside of Basecamp that we use internally. But it's not like an all day thing. It's like, hey, I need something really quickly. So that's a sidebar, my bad on that one. But that's it. Some other apps that I typically launch on startup, Color Slurp. This one's going to sound funny, but you always need like the hex codes of logos and things like that. So color slurp, it actually you open the app, you click the little eyedropper

icon, you put it on your screen, like on the actual like logo or on this section subheading or something like that, you click it, and then you get the actual hex code on your clipboard very quickly. So it's very, it saves me a ton of time when I'm like, Oh, what color is this? I need to match like a heading or a font or something could be something I'm doing in Canva, something I'm doing on the actual backend, website editing, whatever the case may be. Use that quite a bit. My photo editor of choice is Pixelmator Pro.

So it's like Photoshop if you're stupid, like I'm stupid. So Pixelmator is like the good kind of tool for that. But if you know what you're doing, then definitely use Photoshop. And then Zoom obviously is my like meeting tool of choice. That one kind of launches at startup. And that's it.

So I try to keep like the actual applications that launch pretty modest. I don't have a ton of stuff in there. There's other stuff that launches that's more like system based, I have other things in there. But those are the initial launch pieces there. Do you have a similar list on your side of things on the PC side? And I'm sure we have different apps here, which is good that we use like different platforms for sure. It is Yeah, the first thing I Slack is the first thing that comes up. Certainly, that's it is I think for my purposes i do i've got a couple different workspaces that just inevitably i'm a part of so it's nice to be able to coordinate

the conversation it is just i would agree that's the only pro is that at least it's like one place like it's not like i've heard people say oh i do like a contract work for this company and they use teams and then this company has a slack i will say that if a client going to make me bring me into that system at least use slack so i don't have to go to another system or have something else open that would be my only saving grace silver lining on that dark cloud for me that's exactly it that's and it is chrome same way i'm a chrome devote and it is it's just because of the extensions and it's i think there's a lot from the reporting side of things, from just understanding what setup and understanding configuration that you really get to understand from Google Chrome that

I do. It's always amazing to me when I get on a call with a partner or a customer or prospect or anything like that. And I know what their Google Analytics ID is, or I know what their Facebook pixel is or whether they have it installed or not. And they don't. ID is, or I know what their Facebook pixel is or whether they have it installed or not. And they don't, it's just one of those things that I, there are, there's so many tools associated with Chrome that it is probably avoids me having to use extra applications in a lot of cases, because I have,

I've probably in some cases over inundated myself with extensions on Chrome, but giving me all the tools I need right there to be able to assess and see and do some diagnostics on kind of the typical website there. For notes wise, and it is, I've used Evernote. I've used just the sticky notes. It's, I don't, I'm admittedly, I'm a big pen and paper kind of guy. So it's not really, for me, it's digital notes that are great. Now my wife uses a notepad where it does that. It digitally just transfers everything in. And there's another partner that we work with as well.

I saw him using it at Verma. And that's something I have thought about. Again, just being able to take that offline to online and keep things a little more private there and make sure all the data is saved securely. But as far as tools go, yeah, it is. The other tools that go up automatically, Descript goes up automatically. And that's something that since we've been partnering on this stuff, I've used much more. Really for me, it's getting some of the video clips and trying to make sure that I post more consistently on LinkedIn and then take some of this great content that we're producing and push it out there because I do. I think it's a value for sometimes for my internal team and for the external teams and external people in

the industry that hopefully get some value out of what we talk about here. Google Ads Editor is another one that comes up automatically for me. Now that's one that it is Google's kind of bread and butter as far as the major macro editor, I would say. I've also been turned on more to the optimizer side of things by you as well there. So that's management, but overall of ad groups and building of things in a quick and timely fashion, I still think Google ads editor does what it needs to do there. So that's another one that comes up immediately. And I spend a lot of time in there throughout the day as well, trying to think, I think that's it. Like I said, more of what I have application wise is tattooed onto the google chrome extensions and that's where kind of i get the value there

so yeah that's the thing like yeah that makes sense no sorry that's the thing is that basecamp has an app for example but i just use it in the browser because i just i'm in there all day so having to open like the basecamp app and then swapping between the app and the actual like anytime i click on something it's going to go to the browser anyway it's not just like whatever there's really no benefit to using the app it's just the website wrapped in like an app type platform. I guess you do get like nicer looking notifications on PC like or on Mac. Sorry, it has a nicer looking little tray on the top, but that's not a big enough reason for me to want to go there. So yeah, maybe we'll go to the browser next and I'll kind of walk through some of my

bookmarks. I'll skip stuff that's not really productivity focused. We do use like the Google workspace products for our like email. So there's like Google Calendar up there. Obviously, I have Gmail up there as well. Airtable is a tool that we got into. So someone on my team brought Airtable to me last year. And I'd played with it before. And I went, Okay, it's like a fancy spreadsheet. I don't get it. What's the benefit of this first Google Sheet? I was very wrong. It's a very dynamic. It's a database tool. First of all, it's not a spreadsheet. So a spreadsheet is more like a calculator, basically, is how I think about it. A database tool actually stores like schema and data, and it can be organized and grouped by various different elements. That's not really how a spreadsheet works. So once I got into Airtable,

we've now put our entire client, I would say like metadata, whatever you want to call it, our client active list now lives in an Airtable view that is up to date. And that is our like central source of truth, if you will. So for the property manager, they probably have a PMS that does that for them. But there's really nothing for like our agency to do that. There's not like one source that we had previously, it was just like, we have a bunch of Basecamp projects, but they weren't really always updated about like every status or every client at all times. Now we've put that inside of Airtable. So it did add another tool to the mix, which I tend to try to avoid. But I think it's been a huge benefit to everybody on the team, because they can be like, there's I mean, it sounds simple, but we have stuff in there,

who's the point of contact? What's their phone number? What's their what data they sign? What's their base camp project? What's the link to their website, all this stuff is in one place. There's never that question of like, where is XYZ, right, which is a common issue. So if you're a property manager, actually talk to a property management client that I work with, that has used now Airtable, they sync it with their PMS somehow, I don't know exactly how they did that. Maybe it's just a manual update, but then they have a ton of metadata about each property. So here's the date the property came in our program. Here's the owner. Here's where the owner statements near to go. Here's the, um, here's the challenges in the property right now, maintenance wise. Again, there may be other systems that later do this,

but Airtable is really nice. So check it out. It's very easy to understand. There's a free version and then there's a paid version. So that's a new for me. Like it started with me last year, one into the mix. These are not productivity tools, but like analytics is up there. Search console is up there. My beloved ClearScope is up there. These are more like SEO marketing tools. So maybe skip over those for right now. I am trying to write more documentation. So this one is going to sound a little bit silly, but the make a new help doc bookmark link is at the top of my browser bar. So then when I have the idea, I need to document that I just click that I log into my back end of that system, which is just

the back end of our website. And I can write a new help document very quickly. So that sounds like a weird one, but it actually has helped me quite a bit. Not being like, Oh, I'll sit down and write the doc. It's like, No, just click write this button right now. Open a new tab and you write the doc right now you lazy. So that one's pretty good. I think wise, Google ads up there, Facebook ads up there facebook ads up there nothing too interesting or exciting there optimizer is our management of tool of choice maybe i'll let you go down that one because you're now becoming the optimizer pro google drive is up there fresh books is up there with regards to like accounting and invoicing again not really

productivity based but just that's how we can send out all the how the money comes in the door and then yeah other marketing tools we have up there hrefs maybe you could give your thoughts on sem rush as an alternative And then we use Buzzstream for link building. Then there's like accounting up there, Bench is our accounting provider of choice. Lead pages, we built a lot of landing pages there. That one's kind of an old one. I don't click on it too often. But that's kind of what the top browser bar looks like. I bet we have a decent amount of overlap. But I think you've got some other stuff in there too. Probably inventory related. Yeah, I've got a pretty similar there. Google Ads, certainly Google Analytics,

Tag Manager, Google Search Console as well. In, certainly Google Analytics, Tag Manager, Google Search Console. In addition to Search Console, Tag Manager, we do as much as we can through Tag Manager because I've always considered that to be the non-developer's developer tool. Like I don't have to go to a dev. I don't have to go to someone else to make the updates on the back end of the system. I just have to make sure hopefully that the tag manager container has been installed properly and all those updates are good to go there. Spot, we run the business side of things

through HubSpot as our CRM. And then I've got the Venturi CRM as well, just being able to pop into all of our partner accounts and make sure everything is running properly there. Facebook ads managers, same thing there. Clarity, Microsoft Clarity, I also have that. That's how we do all of our screen recording. I know some people do session recording, stuff like that.

Some people use Hotjar. I love Clarity because it's a free tool. It's one of those things where- I think it's better than Hotjar, low-key though, because it actually works a little bit better. I noticed it's smoother. It doesn't have as much choppiness to it. So honestly, I wouldn't even pay.

If they were flipped and Clarity was 20 bucks a month and Hotjar was free, I think I might even consider using Clarity Honestly, it is. It's just, there's just too many good insights there. And they, you can go really deep on the insights there too. We've seen a lot of value on that. Again, as we build out as many landing pages as we do for partners, we want to make sure we understand how people are actually engaging with those landing pages. Are we giving them a good experience there and the love of clarity for that. So that's, I would say one of the, one of the bigger tools in the belt there.

SEMrush is SEMrush, SEMrush, whatever it is. That's the other tool on the SEO side of things. Certainly Ahrefs, SEMrush, whatever you're using, as long as you're able to do some type of keyword research, you're trying to do some type of competitive, competitor review, being able to do stuff like that. There's a lot of functionality that both of those tools have. Again, I think we joke back and forth about one or the other, but if you want to be using one of those tools specifically just to make sure that you don't have any blind spots or you don't have as many blind spots on the SEO side of things, I think it's always going to be a little tricky there. The one thing that I don't think either of us mentioned on the initial startup is Screaming Frog and maybe

because it is, it does, I don't use it as frequently, but I think we both probably have the subscription there and it is, it's awesome for the technical side of things. I think more often than not, you want to do that for an initial audit, but all the other continual maintenance tools are in SEMrush or in Search Console, stuff like that. But Screaming Frog is another tool that we certainly use on the SEO side of things. I'm trying to think. That's the big group. And then Canva as well.

Canva, we don't have the Pro Pixel, Pro tier, whatever it is. I like Canva. Again, I think it's another kind of watered down version of Photoshop. If you are really technically savvy in the Photoshop side of things or InDesign, those are great tools. I've loved using those tools. But with all the enhancements that Canva has made previously, and I'm sure the tool you're using, it is. It's nice to be able to just do things in more of a quick fashion and not have to... I think what we can do, what I could do in Photoshop in an hour, I can do very similar things in Canva in 15, 20 minutes. So I think what we can do, what I could do in Photoshop in an hour, I can do very similar

things in Canva in 15, 20 minutes. So I think there's a streamlining of the process there a little bit. And just making sure that you're getting through that. Optimizer, you touched on, that's something you turned me on to as well. It is having played the scaling game multiple times with Google Ads accounts and having tried to manage hundreds of accounts before manually, it was eye-opening to actually find a tool that actually does a lot of this for you or helps you to at least streamline that process and build some efficiencies in there as well.

Yeah, that is, that's something that I'm shocked that I didn't use it previously and in all the other efforts that we've done. And I don't know how I'll go back to something other than Optimizer just to help with, again, some of that more active management. We know that if you really want Google Ads to perform, you should be actively managing that account, the campaigns, the ad groups, the keywords, whatever we're talking about there. And that's a great tool. There are other tools that'll help that as well.

But I found this to be pretty effective in making sure we're getting the most bang for our buck on the Google ad side of things. Yeah, I like it. I'm going to go down the extensions path there. Next, you touched on it previously. Again, I suspect we have some overlap here, but 1Password is my first extension up there on the little bar. That is our password manager of choice.

Love password managers. I've had that from early on. I had one VA, one virtual assistant back in 2017, and I got and installed 1Password to share with him because I hate, I hate more than anything more than my dislike for Slack. I hate the what's the password for that again, whenever I see that I just want to take a fork and plunge it straight into my eyeball. It drives me crazy. So one password, you put all your parts in there, you add your team, you approve your team in there, obviously, for security purposes, then you move shared passwords

into a shared vault, it's much more secure that way. If you have a spreadsheet with a bunch of passwords sitting out there on the internet, or even locally on like your network, you're just asking begging for someone to come by and take your personal information. And if you use the same password for everything, I don't know, like you're making you drive me even more crazy. I can't it drives me back bonkers. So one password, huge time saver there, whatever it costs a few bucks a month worth it per person or whatever worth it to have one password and not have the dreaded what's the password for that again that is just such a time killer racer productivity it drives me bonkers so that if i could only keep one i don't know that might be the one i keep but luckily it's it's

pretty easy to find other password managers there that's my one of choice go look out there in the marketplace for other password managers i think all of them have been hacked except for one password and like they go into a lot of detail of like exactly why they're like unhackable basically. Or like, even if they were hacked, they would release like hashed emails, hashed passwords, not your actual password. So I trust them. They seem to have a super long track record. They're like nerdy. They're like cloudflare to me. They're like, I don't even understand all of it. But I know that they're the best. So I just go with them. It's the same cost as everything else. So I may as well go with the one that's the most safe. Love that one. All right,

one password, you got your shine there. Keywords Everywhere, that is my bulk keyword research tool allows you to access the Google search keyword API, which is really no longer available, honestly, to you. If you're using Google Ads, it used to be the case that you could get that nice and easy, not really so simple anymore. Excuse me. So I use Keywords Everywhere to upload bulk keyword data, get volume by month that's the only place that you can get that from my knowledge keyword data by month from google use keywords everywhere also shows the little volume underneath the actual search result of the keyword you're searching so i like that one quite a bit tag assistant i use this for what paul was sending

out earlier go on the client site click on it it'll tell you what tags they have same for the next one in the bar metapixel helper will tell you what pixels installed and why all that kind of stuff my one seo plugin little extension here detailed detailed SEO is a juice, click on it. And it shows you like the title tag, the meta description, the URL, the canonical tag, the headings, it gives you a link export. So it's nothing like groundbreaking, I can do all this stuff, like to your point from a second ago inside of Screaming Frog, but it's efficient. Like I'm just on the URL, I click that button, it shows it all to me in one view, I don't have to go like hunting for it in other places. I have this little extension next

called download all images. Sounds very simple, but I use it a ton when I'm going to a client's like property detail page and I need to like download all those images and send them to my designer or upload them into a Facebook post or upload them into an image ad extension or something like that. So that's super helpful. Obviously you could download images one by one on a page, but I find it very inefficient. So I like that one quite a bit. I love this one. This one is called link clump. And by the way, I'll put links in the show notes.

This is going to be our deepest show notes ever by far. But link clump is amazing. Basically what that allows you to do is you can hold like a certain key on your keyboard. Like I can hold Z for example, I can drag my mouse over a stack of links and it will open all those links and new tabs. So if I have a certain number of things to do on a day and I need to open like, oh, let me open all these property detail pages instead of clicking them one by one. I just hold Z mouse over the entire like group of links and I can open all the tabs all at

once. And then here's an even better one. I use C. I hold the C on my keyboard. Then I left click and then I can copy all those URLs to my clipboard at the same time too. So I can either open URLs or copy URLs, which is super useful. Then I paste that into Google sheets or whatever. And then I'm manipulating that data for whatever reason. So love link clump. If you're doing any

kind of link building or like bulk reviewing of web addresses, which is like a lot of us in our day to day, I need to open all these property detail pages and check and see if they have this section added to the property detail page. We can one by one or you can just open them all link clump go to that section then hit command w just open the tab close the tab open the tab close the tab so love that one quite a bit um those are all my pinned ones i have some other stuff in here but it's mostly just like random stuff like lighthouse for speed testing and things like that zoom which is just scheduled meetings and stuff like that what's your takeaway i think i got you a link clump i don't think you know i don't think no that one I was just looking through it.

Lighthouse is there for me. Loom is there. So, you know, for quick screen sharing, screen recording, I'll use Loom for just doing it in window in browser. I use OBS Studio for just bigger recordings too.

But that's something that as long as you get something where you're doing the screen recordings, that always helps. Metapixel helper. That's as far as diagnosing all the stuff for their Metapixel. That's huge to have, again, knowing whether or not it's a small thing, but it's so critical. It is amazing how many people don't know whether or

not they have their Pixel installed on their website. So good to have that on there as well. Tag assistant, same thing with Google Tags, making sure all that is in place. I have detailed SEO extension, very similar to Keywords Everywhere. It is, I think everybody, I think I've probably had a dozen other SEO extensions trying to get more keyword insights. I have had Keywords Everywhere at different times as well. I think it's off more because it was taking up more bandwidth on my browsing than anything else. And I wanted to just get a little faster there.

See here, detailed chat GPT. I've got enhanced a couple of different chat GPT extensions, one that builds it into Google results, one that builds it into just some different prompts. So I probably use chat GPT and the AI powered content generation more on the extension side than I have anywhere else there. But this is one that I use it on the side

just for trying to reach out to if we need to find out emails for someone. It's a pretty cool tool to be able to go through and go into their LinkedIn profile. Now, we know the accuracy of a LinkedIn email may not be that great, but just being able to, if we're just really struggling to reach out to someone, we can't find any contact information or we don't think the contact information is accurate. Artemis is a nice little tool. It's an app sumo. I don't know, probably 50 bucks for a lifetime deal. But I have found some pretty cool email extraction information there.

So that's the other extension that I have on top of that. So yeah. Nice. Yeah. You got me on a few new ones. I didn't realize there was like chat gpt specific ones oh yeah there's like ways that i can make that a little bit more efficient awesome all right so i'm going to grab back next so these are not applications that launch that i launch with nor

are these browser specific applications and this one in particular i think is super useful so text expander no i've been using text expander since college this was like my hack back then i don't know when i first heard about this but i was Wait, you mean I can type something and then it expands into something more. I was like, this reminds me of this is going way back like my runescape days when I played runescape when I was like a tween. And I was like typing the same thing over and over again. And of course, there was like bots and scripts and things like that, that you could use to cheat the game. But I wouldn't do that. So I didn't do that. But I would certainly be like, Oh, this is like, hell on my hands. Like, how can I make this more efficient text expander on a functional level, you type some kind of

phrase, and then it expands into a pre written thing that you have defined. So for example, I type comma, that's my like delimiter so that you don't accidentally trigger this all the way all the time. Because that's what I see people do is they be like, they're like, Oh, I'm going to use a text expander. And I'm going to use like pet friendly as like my starter phrase. And then it's expanded in my pet friendly message to the guest that's oh, this property does not or does allow pets, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, yeah, but you're going to type that word like accidentally, and it's going to trigger accidentally. So I use what's called what text expander calls a delimiter. Mine's the comma, because it's like very easy to reach, like you just tap it. So I type, for example, comma access, and it writes my whole pre written email on me

asking for access for a client. So it sounds simple, but it's, it's very, it's a huge time saver because I just open a new thread. I click sending to Paul. I type comma access, and then it expands this whole email with all the links pre-populated, all the texts pre-populated. All I have to do is fill in your name, like dear Paul, as opposed to whoever. And we're pretty much off to the races.

I can send access emails within seconds of me ending a Zoom call with a prospect. And they're always like, oh, you sent that right away. I'm like, yeah,, as opposed to whoever. And we're pretty much off to the races. I can send access emails within seconds of me ending a Zoom call with a prospect. And they're always like, oh, you sent that right away. I'm like, yeah, I'm top of it. But really, it's just I'm cheating. I'm using TextExpander. There's something that I've already written that I can then just quickly call back up and put into any field, any field. That's the thing about TextExpander.

It's system wide. So it doesn't have to be in a browser. You could be in your mail app of choice, whatever. It is on your machine. It's not local to just one application or one tool or something like that. So I use it all the time. That's like one example, but I use it for how don't you hate typing out like your address or even sound simple, but your phone number, like I just comma ph, my phone number, comma address, my address pops in, this is the new thing people ask for all the time. They always want my like EIN number for my

business. So I run this time tax time. But EIN hits their EIN number, all these things that I could remember, but I just don't want to. This is another thing that I've been doing. We now have a shared vault with myself and my developer. And all of our API keys are actually stored inside of TextExpander. So if you type comma API key, it brings up this little like list. And then you can type in like Gravity Forms.

And then boom, our Gravity Forms API key is just right there. Because yeah, I can go find the Gravity forms API key, but it's gonna take me forever to find that. Whereas if I just type API gravity forms, boom, it's right there. And it's pasted in to the back end of the website, and we're off to the races. So that's like my huge thing when I show this to people, and I just give them like a few examples of what do you have to type all the time, I always have to type this over and over again. I'm like, stop doing that make a little template inside of text expander, make it like comma, hello, if it's like a guest welcome message, and then you can still customize it. You don't have to be like a robot, but like, at least it types out like 90% of what you were going to type

anyways. And then you could just fill in a line or two around Oh, it's a beautiful Monday here. We hope you enjoy the March weather like you can still customize the message. But it gives you so much time and so much effort, energy, whatever you want to call it on typing that I think text expander is like a must have for like, dayto-day like sanity and productivity so do you have a text expansion tool or i don't know it's yeah i've heard you talk about it is it's one of those things that now i for better or worse i feel like i type faster so i do think that's a benefit that i have but i like having seen you use that i was saying having you say, haven't you seen TextExpander? I've witnessed it and I've seen it be quicker.

So yeah, it's a tool that I definitely yearn for a little bit there. But I'm going to say that my typing skills, and I don't know what the number is anymore. I haven't done one of those typing tests in a while, but they get me through for a little while and enough that I can get around that one. But it is still intriguing when I see the quick keystrokes there. Yeah, I'm just lazy. Maybe I can type it, but like, I don't want to, you know, I'm just like, I want to hit this little abbreviation and get going. Yeah. I can't argue that. All right. So my other like my other wrap back one that I want to spend at least a minute on,

we won't get to keyboard maestro today, just because that's like a whole thing in and of itself. But keyboard maestro was like, once you want to go crazy, you go to keyboard maestro. So maybe that's the version two of this episode, it'll actually record your screen, and you can record yourself doing certain actions. So if you had to click approve on 1000 images, you could just literally launch the keyboard maestro macro, hit record, click it, and then run that action and be like, run this 900 times or something. So it is insane. It can mimic whatever you want. You can write scripts, you can have it click on URLs, you can have it open tabs, you can have it close stuff. It is the like I said, master version, but the lightweight version, but I think anyone can access is one of these like application launchers. So I

think PC has a different way that this works. But on Mac, you have to go to your dock on the left side, you have to go find the app and click it and open it. And yeah, you can do that's fine. But like, instead, what he uses an app called Alfred. My my like action to invoke Alfred is option spacebar. So option spacebar. And then I can type in, for example, like screaming frog. And just as I type SCR, screaming frog is already there, I hit enter, and then screaming frog is opening and it's already on the way. So I use Alfred for that use Alfred all the time for calculations. So again, once you open option spacebar on my keyboard, it opens this like text window. You can type in there like seven plus four plus two

divided by 10. Or if I'm giving like a click-through rate estimate for a client, I don't do calculator, like public math, it always causes problems. So I just use Alfred to do that. I like open and I'll be like, okay, 1200 clicks times 10% click-through rate times $4.27 cost per click. Okay, on this keyword, we need a $500, $27 budget,

you know, something like that. So I love, love, love Alfred. That is like my next most common thing. In fact, they keep stats. Okay, on this keyword, we need a $500, $27 budget, you know, something like that. So I love, love, love Alfred. That is like my next most common thing. In fact, they keep stats. Let me open this really quickly. They keep stats on how often you use Alfred. And since I've purchased Alfred, I've used it 47,624 times.

And it tells you the average. So the average time that I use it 31 times a day, 31 times a day. So it's just like, this thing is the best. I use it 31 times a day 31 times a day so it's just like this thing is the best i use it just even swap between like applications i use it all the time alfred there you go i don't know what the pc equivalent is but like that's the thing then that is the and i've been on enough meetings with you that it is and i promise you anybody who's listening this is not it is pretty incredible how quickly Conrad navigates a computer.

It was mind boggling to me the first time that I got on a meeting with him. And Alfred's keystrokes are just, again, that quick. I know it wasn't something that I thought I was in trouble at that point. The first meeting I had, like, oh, gosh, this is how he's running meetings. Oh, my gosh, there's no way I'm done. I have no equal. There's no equivalent. I'm done. I'm going to fall behind here this is how he's running meetings. Oh my gosh, there's no way I'm done. There's, I have no equal. There's no equivalent. I'm done.

I'm going to fall behind here immediately. But I think it is when you see it in action, when you see it in motion, let's get used to it. And just the efficiency it builds in your day. I can't, I can't imagine like how many little five minute, three minute, two minute, 10 minute tasks that are just gone because you're not doing those extra two or three keystrokes or clicks of them. It is pretty incredible to see you navigate the technology in that way. And again, I think I'm

pretty quick. I feel like I'm pretty speedy, but you can tell that it's not surprising to me. 46,000 is a huge number, but it's not surprising to me to hear that you're hitting that 31 times a day because I've seen it and it is very impressive to see. And I understand why you can do what you do in the time that you can do it in that way. I've gotten better. I've gotten better at this stuff. Not because I'm any smarter. In fact, I think probably dumber now than I was five years ago. You know what it is? I have three kids now. I don't have time for anything else. So when I'm here, I got to lock in. I got to get things done. I can't be fooling around and be like, oh, let me do it in a slightly less efficient way. No, we got to get it here, I got to lock in. I got to get things done. I can't be fooling around and being like, oh, let me do it in a slightly less efficient way.

No, we got to get it done because I got baths to give at six o'clock and stuff like that. Yep. Go to the feed and all this kind of stuff. So here you go. These are not recommendations from a position of privilege.

They are recommendations from a position of, oh my God, I have a lot of things to do and I have very little time. So damn it, I better go pretty fast and pretty efficient to get it all done. So that's my grab bag. Do you have other things that you touched on screening frog? Is there anything else that's like on your mind that you help helps you a little bit?

It is. I think, I think the tool, I was not privy to a lot of tools early on. It was something where we had to figure out solutions internally. I think that helped to really get the most out of the basic applications that we can do. I think that in general, and that's I think why we got along right away at the start is that it was finding things that I don't think a lot of people know how to manipulate Google ads or Facebook ads like we do because we're in there as frequently as we are. So I think that's the, I've tried to use all the free tools as possible.

So Tag Manager, Cl clarity, Google ads, Facebook ads, all these things. They're great management tools out there to help you become more efficient. And I do I think that's always helpful. And I think we've brought out some really great options here. But I think it's also important to make sure that there are you can use the tools you can get as much of the tools that Google provides that Facebook provides. And you can do a lot without having to add these tools. These are just taking it to that next level. It's really allowing you to make your days more efficient

and being able to take on more clients, take on more partners, take on more work. And I think that's a great, it's great that these options and solutions are out there to make sure that you can scale a business. You can do some of these things that are a little more aggressive. You don't have to manage 150 accounts from Google Ads, from the individual accounts themselves.

There's some really great tools out there. So yeah, I don't think I've taken this deep a dive into some of these applications. Admittedly, AppSumo was something that was brand new to me. And you guys turned me into something terrible. It's a disease now. It's not the domains game with you, but it's not that far from it. I've got a lot more of those lifetime deal softwares that I am trying to pick apart and find ways that we can be more efficient. Yeah, yeah. I guess that my ending piece here is philosophical, which I have two philosophical

notes to end on. Number one is if you've gone through this far, and you're like, Oh, but I don't know if you're about to say something out if you're thinking right now, or something's about to come out of your mouth to the tune of oh i don't know i'm not very techy stop it i hate that that's exactly whenever whenever you speak that over yourself you're automatically casting yourself then as like someone that can't do this stuff so instead even if you feel that way don't say it i don't want to hear it open it and say i wonder if i could use this to do x and just do one thing if you only had text expander and you had three snippets inside of it i still believe that could make someone's life better i really do believe that you could have three and one could be like, what's my opening message

to a guest? What's my opening message to an owner? And what's my like, constant, please give me feedback on Airbnb message that I send all the time, like those three messages that you may type out all the time, if you just automate those three and get little snippets on those, you get them. And then after a month or two of using them, you're like, ah, I found a fourth one and a fifth one, a sixth one, and it builds in your memory. It's like a, it's like this thing so first of all don't be

like i can't do it or don't say oh i don't know how that's the nonsense i don't believe it's true so you can learn anything anything we're talking about here requires no coding no programming none of that it is the opening of an application and correct like you said a second ago paul manipulating it to help you not to make things take more time it's actually to save time and is there a tiny learning curve at the beginning maybe but once you figure it out you're going to be like it's going to be a 20 minute or hour investment on the front end to save you like 50 hours in the back end so it's definitely worth it and then the second thing is that i believe that good software like optimizer like you were referencing a second ago is leverage and the

only way for us to get more done like in today's world like a tase economy that's why we talk about chat tbt maybe a little bit more than we should as you and I both see it for what it is, which is this is how you can like superpower yourself and get a lot more done. It's not going to replace anybody. I don't really think that's going to be the case. Or it's not going to replace any meaningful work. I really don't believe that. But it's gonna make you a lot more productive if you embrace it and use it to its fullest potential. So it's like an Archimedes quote, right? Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it and I can move the world I can change the world and i believe that good tools using no knowing how to use the tools in the software is the same way you can take the same input of time or people or whatever and it's like

leverage you can pull down and you can get a lot further along than your competition or you can get a lot further along than other people because you are going faster you are launching the application 31 times a day and every time you do that it's 20 minutes here five minutes there minutes there, two minutes there, three minutes there. And it just makes you flow and go a lot faster. So we're at my time here. But I wanted to end on like those two specific thoughts around and around speaking anything negative over yourself. I'm like, I don't know how to do this. That's not true at all. There was a time when no, none of us knew how to do anything. And now there's a lot that you can do that you never used to know how to do. So that's kind of my way that I want to end it. Anything else? or should we drop a bow on this one?

That's ready. I think we're good for the bow. Okay, so we won't ask for reviews. Instead, we'll ask for feedback because this was a way out there episode. It had nothing to do really with vacation rentals, although obviously everything we talked about today, you could tie back into your vacation rental operations.

And I do believe this. I'm tapping my computer. Hopefully it came here. This computer that we have here is basically the tool that you use to interact. And the guest is going to find you because they searched on their computer or their iphone or whatever their laptop and found you you know the you're going to interact with homeowners through this you're going to interact with guests through these different tools so the more efficient you

can make them for your business i think the better your business can be and not only that if you have your team members all these little super powered app launchers imagine the fact you can do with a team of four what some people might need team eight or 12 or 15 to do, and you can kill them. So that's like hopefully the inspirational piece about this that actually ties back to the vacation rental. But yeah, no review bag this week. Instead, email us feedback. Do you like this kind of episodes?

Or do you want us to just stick to marketing? That's okay to email us and say, just stick to marketing, the subject line, and we'll do that. But we thought we'd throw a different one out there and see what people thought. So yeah, that's all we got. And we will see you next week on the show. Thanks so much.