This is my personal collection of resources for staying sharp on AI as an operator. Not a developer guide. Not a hype list. These are the people, newsletters, and channels I actually follow and learn from.

I'll update this regularly as the space evolves.

📰 Newsletters

Every
🔗 every.to
My #1 recommendation. Covers AI from every angle that matters: product, philosophy, business, and how people are actually using it at work. The free tier is good; the paid membership is worth it for the deep dives.

Lenny's Newsletter — Lenny Rachitsky
🔗 lennyrachitsky.com
The gold standard for product and growth. His AI coverage has gotten really strong, with real playbooks from operators who are implementing, not just theorizing.

Ben's Bites — Ben Tossell
🔗 bensbites.co
Fast daily digest of what's happening in AI. If you only have 5 minutes, this is the one. Great for catching tool launches and trends before everyone else.

One Useful Thing — Ethan Mollick
🔗 oneusefulthing.org
Wharton professor who actually uses AI tools and reports back with data. The most credible, least hype-y voice on practical AI adoption. If a non-technical executive asks you "should we use AI?", send them here.

Future-Proof Your Career with AI — Khe Hy
🔗 khehy.com
Focused on how AI changes knowledge work, written by someone who thinks deeply about professional adaptation. Less "here's a new tool" and more "here's how to think about your career now." Great for people who feel behind.

The Rundown AI — Rowan Cheung
🔗 therundown.ai
2M+ readers. Daily AI news with step-by-step tutorials and automation walkthroughs. Good breadth if you want to see what's out there.

🐦 People to Follow on X

Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy)
🔗 x.com/karpathy
Ex-OpenAI, ex-Tesla AI lead. When he explains something, you understand it. Period. The rare person who can make the hardest AI concepts feel intuitive. If he posts, stop scrolling and read it.

Dan Shipper (@danshipper)
🔗 x.com/danshipper
CEO of Every. Thinks clearly about where AI is actually headed and backs it up with real examples from running his own company on AI. One of the best "big picture + practical" follows.

Boris Cherny (@bcherny)
🔗 x.com/bcherny
Creator of Claude Code at Anthropic. Worth following even if you're not technical because he shows what's possible when you give AI the right tools. Seeing his posts is like watching the future of work happen in real time.

Zara Zhang (@zarazhangrui)
🔗 x.com/zarazhangrui
Builder and writer who learns in public. Strong on practical resources and the "vibe coding" movement (building software by describing what you want, not writing code). Relatable for non-engineers getting into AI building.

Ryan Carson (@ryancarson)
🔗 x.com/ryancarson
Founder and builder who documents what he's shipping with AI in real time. Good for seeing the founder/operator perspective on AI adoption, not just commentary. I love his Ralph loop.

Matt Shumer (@mattshumer_)
🔗 x.com/mattshumer_
AI entrepreneur who ships fast and reports honestly on what works and what doesn't. One of the best follows for model comparisons and "which AI should I actually use for X" answers. Loved his piece "Something Big Is Happening"

Allie K. Miller (@alliekmiller)
🔗 x.com/alliekmiller
Focused on enterprise and operator use cases: what's actually being adopted, what's working, and how teams are rolling out AI. She's a fountain of ideas.

Swyx (@swyx)
🔗 x.com/swyx
Engineer turned AI educator. Runs the Latent Space community and podcast. Good for understanding the "why" behind AI trends, not just the "what." Makes technical shifts legible for non-engineers.

Alex Finn (@AlexFinn)
🔗 x.com/AlexFinn
Makes AI building approachable for non-technical people. Great follow if you want to learn more OpenClaw use cases.

Thariq (@trq212)
🔗 x.com/trq212
On the Claude Code team at Anthropic. Worth watching if you're curious about how AI agents actually work under the hood and where coding tools are going.

Aakash Gupta (@aakashgupta)
🔗 x.com/aakashgupta
Excellent for product strategy, growth tactics, and pragmatic AI thinking for PMs and operators.

🎙️ Podcasts & YouTube

AI and I — Every.to
🔗 every.to/podcast
Long-form conversations with builders and thinkers. High quality bar. Start with any episode featuring Dan Shipper or a founder talking about how they use AI operationally.

How I AI Podcast — Claire Vo
🔗 youtube.com/@howiaipodcast
Practical walkthroughs on specific use cases. Good for operators who want "show me how" over "tell me why" as high calibre guests share how they use AI at work.

Greg Isenberg — YouTube
🔗 youtube.com/@gregisenberg
Startup and community building meets AI product thinking. Great for "what should I build?" and distribution angles.  He shares so many business ideas and is entertaining and useful.

Nick Saraev — YouTube
🔗 youtube.com/@nicksaraev
Step-by-step AI automation tutorials. If you want to see implementation-heavy content, here's your spot.

Matthew Berman — YouTube
🔗 youtube.com/@matthew_berman
Practical tutorials on AI agents where he breaks down things in plain English. A solid resource for staying current on fast-moving AI products and seeing how they work in real use cases, especially for builders and technical operators.

How to Actually Learn AI (Without Losing Your Mind)

The AI space moves fast. Uncomfortably fast. Every week there's a new model, a new tool, a new "everything has changed" moment. It can feel like you're already behind before you've even started.

Here's the thing: you don't need to keep up with everything. You need to keep up with what's useful to you.

Start with one tool. Pick Claude or ChatGPT. Use it every day for a month. Not for fun, for your actual work. Drafting emails, summarizing docs, brainstorming, analyzing data. The goal isn't to master AI; it's to build the muscle of reaching for it when you hit friction.

Follow 2-3 people, not 20. Information overload is worse than knowing nothing because it creates anxiety without action. Pick Every + another newsletter + one podcast. That's enough.

Learn by doing, not reading. Every article about AI might be outdated by the time you finish reading it. But the skill of knowing how to use AI tools compounds forever. Spend 80% of your time doing, 20% reading. Shipping projects (even if they are just for fun) teaches you the most.

Don't compare your Day 1 to someone's Day 1,000. The people posting mind-blowing AI demos on X or LinkedIn have been at this for years. You're not behind. You're starting.

The only wrong move is spectating. You do not need to understand transformers or fine-tuning or RAG. You need to open Claude or ChatGPT and type, “Help me do [thing I’m struggling with].” That is enough. Use AI to teach you, troubleshoot with you, sharpen your thinking, and help you move faster. The edge right now does not go to the people who know the most theory. It goes to the people who use the tools.

Have fun and share what you learn!

The Setup

Just under a month ago, I had a single AI assistant. Today, I have a team of eight specialized agents running 24/7 on a $5/month server, each with their own personality and expertise. They coordinate work, hand off tasks to each other, and ship code while I sleep.

This is what's possible with OpenClaw — an open-source framework for running persistent AI agents. No cloud subscriptions. No vendor lock-in. Just your own AI team, running on your own infrastructure.

The First Week: From Setup to Shipping Apps

I set up one agent called Dango connected to Telegram. Within days, I was using it for everything.

The small stuff that added up:

• Movie picks for a 12-hour flight. I rambled a list of films I was considering after opening my in flight entertainment system. Dango looked up each one, pulled ratings and summaries from Rotten Tomatoes and iMDB, told me which ones were worth my time. No Googling, no scrolling reviews.

• Restaurants in Tokyo. I got results from Tabelog (Japan's Yelp) — ratings, cuisine type, price range, walking distance. Way better than scrolling Google Maps in a language I don't read.

• Specific recommendations. In the screenshot below I sent it a voice message while I was at Gion Duck Noodles to ask which sauce I should choose for my duck tsukemen and it put together a nice response.

Pegasus was designed with a hyped personality (forgive it for the caps!)

• Flight tracking. Dango parsed my booking PDF, set up automatic monitoring, and pinged me with gate changes and delays. I also got a powder report for my ski trip with resort comparisons.

• Voice replies. When my hands were full, I sent voice messages and got voice replies back. It switches modes based on how I message it.

None of this is revolutionary on its own. But one assistant handling all of it, remembering my preferences, always available — that compounds.

Then I Built a Full-Stack App at 35,000 Feet

Here's the part that still blows my mind: I built my first full-stack app on a 12-hour flight to Tokyo. No laptop. Just my phone and Telegram.

The plane had Wi-Fi for messaging, but I couldn't browse websites or open URLs. I was in seat 15F, somewhere over the Arctic, messaging my AI agent through Telegram. I'd describe what I wanted: "Create a Kanban board with columns for backlog, in progress, and done. Make the cards draggable. Add agent assignment." The agent would build it, commit the code, deploy to Vercel, and send me a screenshot of the live app.

I couldn't visit any URLs to see the result. But the agent could access everything — GitHub, Vercel, the deployed app. So it would screenshot the UI and send the image to Telegram. I'd look at it, say "make the cards darker, add a border," and a few minutes later get a new screenshot showing the changes.

By the time I landed in Tokyo, Mission Control was live. A Kanban-style dashboard with drag-and-drop, filters, standup views, activity feeds. 19 features, deployed to production. Built entirely through a chat interface while watching movies at 35,000 feet.

More Apps Followed

Trove (Read-Later App) — A smart article saver with AI categorization for all the articles and tweets I read weekly. I kicked off the build by answering a few questions and fleshing out a PRD before bed. By morning there were 14 new commits and a live app. Telegram bot integration, automatic summarization, newsletter export, all created from the user stories in the PRD while I slept.

After the apps were built, I had the AI run its own code review. It found real bugs: comments not saving to the database, a security header blocking API calls, an API key accidentally exposed in client-side code. It fixed them and locked down database access.

Two apps. Under 48 hours each. Zero lines of code written by me.

The Everyday Stuff That Adds Up

Beyond building apps, there's a layer of small tasks that stack up:

Public market idea generation. I use agents to turn news into structured investment inputs. As I'm interested in public market investing on what drives the AI stack, they track themes (infrastructure, chips, data centers, enterprise AI), map second-order winners, and surface a shortlist with thesis, risks, and what would invalidate each idea then write me detailed reports.

Client research. Before calls, I ask for a quick brief on the person or company. Recent news, background, talking points. It shows up in Telegram 5 minutes before the meeting.

Converting voice to action. I ramble voice notes while walking the dog. The agent transcribes, extracts action items, and adds them to my task list.

Small tasks, but they add up. When one assistant handles all of them, remembers context, and is always available, it starts to feel like a different way of working.

The Morning It Made Its Own Decisions

This is the part I didn't expect.

A few weeks in, I gave my agent a standing instruction: every morning at 7am, send me a curated reading list. And do one small proactive thing of your choosing like fix a bug, add a missing feature, write documentation. Your call.

I didn't specify what to fix. I didn't file a ticket. I just said: look around, find something useful, do it.

On the morning of February 6th, I was somewhere in the Japanese Alps. At 7am the cron fired. The agent searched for articles, found three worth reading. Then it opened my codebase, scanned for bugs and TODOs — nothing obvious. Checked the git log. Then it noticed: the project had no quick-start guide. A new contributor couldn't get up to speed in under an hour.

So it wrote one.

262 lines of documentation: setup instructions, environment variables, full project structure breakdown, API route reference, Telegram command cheat sheet, tech stack, roadmap. Then it committed the file (533354a — docs: add QUICK_START guide for faster onboarding), pushed to GitHub, and sent me a Telegram message with the curated articles and a note: "Shipped while you slept."

I didn't ask for that file. There was no task card, no spec, no approval step. The agent looked at the project, decided what was missing, and did it.

I've been using AI every day at work, I implement automations with AI for my clients and even personally coach executives on how to use AI so I am deep into this space. One of the reasons I've been so excited about OpenClaw is because it can proactively communicate with you and has such great memories that you don't have to keep reminding it about stuff.

Scaling to a Team of Eight

One assistant was good. But some tasks needed different expertise. So over the following weeks, I spun up specialists:

Each agent has their own Telegram bot, their own personality file, and their own memory. Pip responds like a data-focused analyst. Koa is warm and never guilt-trips about missed workouts.

They also coordinate. When Dango gets a coding question, it hands off to Lux with full context. Marketing copy goes to Yuzu. It's like having a small remote team that works 24/7 — except you set it up once and it runs.

Parallel Work and Autonomous Operations

The latest upgrade: sub-agents that spawn their own workers.

When I ask "research these 5 topics and synthesize," Dango doesn't do them one at a time. It spawns 5 workers in parallel, each researching their piece simultaneously, then rolls the results up into a single response.

Research that took 10 minutes now takes 2.

This runs constantly in the background:

• Daily AI Brief (10am) — Three parallel workers research news, tools, and technical content, then synthesize into my morning briefing.
• Portfolio Brief (8am) — Pip checks overnight movements, upcoming earnings, and material news.
• Weekly code audits — Automated security and quality checks across all my repos.

I wake up to updates in Telegram. No manual triggers.

The Patterns That Make It Work

1. Model tiering

• Opus for complex reasoning and main conversations
• Sonnet for sub-agents and background work
• Cheap model for heartbeats (periodic check-ins)

I cut costs roughly 60% by not running everything on the top-tier model. Quality where it matters, savings everywhere else.

2. Memory architecture

Agents forget everything between sessions — unless you give them memory files:

• MEMORY.md — Long-term curated memories
• memory/YYYY-MM-DD.md — Daily logs
• USER.md — What they know about you

An agent that remembers your preferences is a different thing from one that doesn't.

3. Personality files

Each agent has a SOUL.md that defines how they communicate. Same underlying model, completely different experience. Dango is direct. Koa never guilt-trips. Pip skips the hype. Pegasus talks like a Gen Z hype monster.

4. Compounding corrections

When I say "never do this again" or "remember this forever," it saves permanently. Every correction makes the agents better. A month in, they know my preferences, my communication style, the mistakes to avoid. The longer you run them, the more useful they get.

What This Costs

Note that I'm going to move off Claude Max soon, will be experimenting with Kimi 2.5 and Minimax or OpenAI's Codex in the next week.

What Surprised Me

The personal agents turned out to matter most. Koa (fitness) and Pegasus (travel) aren't "productive" in any obvious sense, but they make life better. After a ski injury, having a warm recovery coach in my pocket genuinely changed how I approached rehab. I didn't expect that.

Multi-agent feels like a team. Messaging different agents for different needs feels natural fast. You stop thinking "I'm talking to AI" and start thinking "let me check with Pip."

Parallel work changes your expectations permanently. Once you've seen 5 workers research simultaneously, waiting for anything sequential feels slow.

Small corrections compound. My agents today are meaningfully different from a month ago. Not because of model updates but because of dozens of small corrections that stuck.

Trust builds gradually, then shifts fast. Small conveniences (flight tracking, restaurant picks) built enough trust that I started delegating bigger things. Now I hand off things I would've done myself six months ago without thinking twice.

Who This Is For

Solo founders who want to ship without a team. Go from idea to deployed product in days.

Operators drowning in small tasks. Client research, flight tracking, voice notes to action items, all of it handled.

Anyone curious about AI agents but skeptical of the hype. Once you start digging it's gonna be really fun.

Already running OpenClaw? The morning surprise setup, model tiering, and compounding corrections sections are all things worth stealing if you haven't tried them yet.

I will caveat that I would not set up OpenClaw on my own computer, and I still am reluctant to hand it access to my personal email for security reasons because it has an enormous amount of power.

Getting Started

OpenClaw is open-source: github.com/openclaw/openclaw

The simplest path:

1. Spin up a cheap VPS (Hetzner - my rec, DigitalOcean, whatever)
2. Install OpenClaw
3. Connect to Telegram
4. Start with one agent, add specialists as you need them

Docs: docs.openclaw.ai
Community: Discord

Final Takeaway

The biggest shift is not a single feature. It is the operating model: AI as a persistent team, not a one-off chatbot. Once that clicks, you stop asking "what can this prompt do?" and start asking "what system should run without me?" Super excited about being able to build more apps while I sleep and automating the boring stuff in my life, so I get time to enjoy it.

Written with the help of Dango, who is no longer offended by my editing because it learned that direct feedback makes the output better.

It's 3 PM on a Thursday when your star operations person gives two weeks' notice. In that moment, you realize with growing dread that your entire customer onboarding process, the one that touches every single new customer, lives exclusively in her head. Sure, there are some scattered notes in Slack and maybe an old draft in Google Docs, but nothing comprehensive. Nothing that would let someone else pick up where she left off.

This scenario plays out at startups every day. And it's completely preventable.

Internal documentation isn't just about preparing for someone's departure, though that alone makes it worth the effort. It's about building a company that can scale without constant bottlenecks, where new hires become productive in days instead of months, and where your team stops wasting time answering the same questions over and over.

In this article, I'll cover what documentation is, why it's crucial for startups, how to build a culture of documentation even when you're short on time, and most importantly, how to actually get started today, not "when things calm down."

Why is documentation important?

Here's what happens without documentation:

You waste time explaining the same things over and over. If you onboard 2-3 people per quarter and spend 2 hours each walking them through your project management system, file locations, and expense submissions, that's 24 hours per year—three full workdays—explaining the same information. A comprehensive onboarding document reduces that to 30 minutes of review time per person.

Critical knowledge walks out the door with employees. Your ops person knows the entire customer onboarding flow. Your lead engineer knows how to debug your payment system. Your first sales hire knows which objections actually matter. When they leave, that knowledge disappears unless you've documented it. This isn't just about turnover, it's about vacation days, sick leave, or anyone being able to step in when needed.

Mistakes multiply without a single source of truth. When your sales team promises one refund policy and your support team follows another because they learned it differently, you create customer confusion and internal conflict. When three different people deploy code three different ways, eventually something breaks. Documentation ensures everyone does critical processes the same way.

Who should create documentation in a startup?

Everyone, but not in the way you think.

Here's what doesn't work: declaring "documentation is everyone's responsibility" and hoping people do it. They won't. They're too busy, and documentation always feels like something you can do later.

Here's what does work: the person who owns a process owns its documentation.

Your sales lead documents the sales process. Your ops person documents customer onboarding. Your engineering lead documents deployment. This makes sense because they're the expert, they know what trips people up, and they have the most to gain from not being interrupted with questions.

But you do need one person (probably you, initially) to:

• Set up the system and templates
• Establish basic standards so docs aren't wildly inconsistent
• Remind people to update docs when processes change
• Periodically audit what's missing or outdated

The key is making documentation part of the process itself, not extra work. When your ops person changes how you onboard customers, updating the doc is part of making that change. When your engineer creates a new deployment script, documenting it is part of shipping it.

Creating a documentation process

The difference between startups with good documentation and startups with documentation graveyards is simple: process.

1. Decide what should be documented

Not everything needs documentation. Focus on high-impact areas first. Start by documenting:

• Critical workflows that would cause major problems if done incorrectly
• Processes that cause confusion or require multiple people to explain
• Anything that currently lives in only one person's head

A simple way to identify what to document: ask your team "What questions do you get asked most often?" Those answers should be documented.

2. Choose a central repository for documents

Pick ONE place where all documentation lives. Nothing kills documentation culture faster than having some docs in Google Drive, some in Slack, some in Notion, and some in people's inboxes. When people can't find documentation, they stop looking for it (and stop creating it!)

3. Create a few templates that team members can use as a starting point

Templates lower the barrier to creating documentation. Instead of staring at a blank page wondering how to structure a doc, team members can fill in sections. The easier you make it to create documentation, the more likely people are to actually do it.

You don't need fancy templates. Start with one simple structure that works for most processes. Here's a free Notion template that I created that you can duplicate and use: Link

As you grow, you might add specialized templates for things like onboarding guides, troubleshooting docs, or technical specifications. But start simple. The goal is to remove the "how should I structure this?" question so people can focus on actually writing down what they know.

4. Schedule time to keep documents updated

Documentation becomes useless if it's outdated. Build in regular reviews:

• Assign an owner to each critical document
• Set quarterly reminders to review and update key processes
• When you change a process, update the documentation at the same time, not later
• Add "last updated" dates so people know if information is current

Choosing a tool for internal documentation

When you're looking for a tool, make sure it's easy to collaborate. Look for features like:

• A built-in way to comment on each page
• A centralized place where everyone can see all changes made by others at once
• The ability to create new pages quickly and easily
• A comprehensive search function
• Integrations with other tools that you use for a smooth workflow (e.g. Slack, Teams, Figma)
• A way to add attachments, like images or PDFs

Use a tool like Notion, which has useful collaboration features, allowing users to comment on specific parts of the content so that everyone can see what other people think about it and contribute their own thoughts as well. They make it easy for teams to work together on documents by allowing multiple authors within one document at once in real time. For small teams (<5 people), you could get by with Google Docs, with the caveat that you have to be very meticulous in the organization of the documents.

What are some tips for documentation?

Keep it simple. Here are some handy tips:

• Write for someone who knows nothing. This is the curse of knowledge problem. You know your process so well you forget what's confusing about it. When you write documentation, assume the reader has never done this before. If you're explaining "how to deploy," don't skip the step where you SSH into the server because it seems obvious. Nothing is obvious.
• Skip the jargon. Don't say "OKR" or "sprint planning" without explaining what it means. Your future hires won't know your acronyms. Write like you're explaining it to a smart friend who doesn't work at your company.
• Use screenshots and videos, not walls of text. A 2-minute Loom video showing someone how to process a refund is better than three paragraphs of instructions. Screenshots with arrows pointing to the right buttons beat written descriptions every time.
• Use bullet points instead of paragraphs whenever possible. This helps keep things clear by separating each step into its own section--thereby making it much easier on both the writer and reader when trying to navigate through long documents filled with dense blocks of text or paragraphs that run on forever.
• Use colors. Many people are visual learners and using colors can make otherwise dull and boring documentation come to life!
• Keep it updated or delete it. Outdated documentation is worse than no documentation because people follow it and break things. When you change a process, update the doc the same day. Add a "last updated" date at the top. If a doc hasn't been touched in a year, archive it.

Getting Started

If you're staring at this article thinking "this all sounds great but I'm drowning and don't know where to start," here's your answer. Document these three things this week:

1. Critical access information

Create one document that lists:

• How to access every tool your team uses (and who to ask if someone gets locked out)
• Where important files and folders live
• Who owns what (billing, domains, social accounts, etc.)
• Emergency contacts and escalation paths

Why this first? Because when someone needs access to something right now, fumbling through Slack trying to figure out who has the password costs everyone time and creates unnecessary stress.

Important note: Do not list passwords in the documentation though, use a password manager to keep things safe.

2. Your biggest bottleneck process

Think about what slows your team down. Not what happens most often, but what creates friction when it does happen.

Good candidates:

• Processes that only 1-2 people know how to do (creates bottlenecks)
• Things that work differently depending on who does them (creates inconsistency)
• Tasks where people constantly ask "how do I do X again?"

3. Your highest-stakes process

What process, if done wrong, would cause the most damage? Maybe it's handling customer data, processing refunds, or managing your production database. Document this because the cost of mistakes here is too high not to have a clear procedure.

That's it. Three documents. Start here, and you've already solved 80% of the documentation chaos at most early-stage startups. Everything else can come later.

Conclusion

The startups that nail documentation early get to spend their time building and growing instead of constantly firefighting and re-explaining things. They onboard faster, scale smoother, and actually get to take vacation without everything falling apart.

You've got this. Pick the easiest document from the list and knock it out today. Future you (and your entire team) will thank you.

Delegation is one of the most important skills to build as a leader, especially in a rapidly-growing startup. It allows you to work more effectively and efficiently, while building up the skillsets of your team members.

But delegation isn't always easy. How do you know who should be doing what? How can you be a hands-on manager without micromanaging? And how do you ensure that your team members are actually completing their tasks?

Here's a tactical guide on how to delegate effectively:

1. Delegate to the right people

Set team members up for success by delegating to their strengths.

Delegate tasks that someone else could handle more effectively than you can — not just because they're easy or routine, but because it is something they enjoy or are great at. For example, if someone on your team has great writing skills, ask them to handle all email communications for a project instead of trying to do it yourself (and failing).

If you've been having career conversations with your team members and have jointly identified areas they're looking to grow in, challenge them to work on tasks that will help them gain experience in those areas.

Remember to not delegate heavy tasks or projects to someone who already has a lot on their plate, it's a recipe for burnout.

2. Start with why

Share how the task impacts customers & the team.

The best delegators don't just give out tasks and disappear. They make sure their team understands why it's important that they complete the task, and they do it in a way that makes them care.

Simon Sinek always reminds us to Start With Why. In order to get better buy-in from your team, share the following:

• Why is this task important?
• What are you trying to accomplish?
• How does this impact customers?
• How does this solve problems for our team?

The more you can get your team members excited about how their contribution fits into the larger scheme of things, the more motivated they'll be to complete tasks with excellence. Context is so important.

3. Communicate expectations clearly

Describe what needs to get done.

Be clear about what you expect from your team members, starting with the purpose and objective for the task.

Be straightforward on what you’re looking for in the deliverable. How do you want it delivered? Is it a customer-facing presentation, a document, a wireframe, a live app, a slide deck, or a dashboard?

Include any key details that may affect how quickly or efficiently they complete the task(s). Make sure this information is documented somewhere so that everyone involved has access to it — whether it’s an email, document or spreadsheet online — so there aren’t any misunderstandings later down the road.

It's also useful to share what's in scope and out of scope if you're in a time crunch.

4. Establish clear deadlines

When does the task need to be completed by?

Break the task down into manageable chunks (which I like to call milestones), with definite dates for each step and be clear what you want to see at each stage. This helps your team members plan accordingly and ensure that they have enough time to complete the task.

You should also be open to feedback from your team members on timelines (for example, if they think it might take longer than expected).

5. Remove ambiguity by requesting a recap

Clarify that the person assigned the task understands what is being asked of them.

Many times, when a task is not being done right, the fault lies in the one who delegated it. Ensure that your instructions aren't overly ambiguous or misinterpreted by asking your team members to recap what they believe they should deliver, and the timeline they are expected to do so to clear up any doubts. It might feel awkward the first time you do it, but trust me, it's incredibly helpful. To ease the discomfort, you could say this: "Could you quickly recap what we agreed upon?"

Encourage your team members to ask questions up front too! This makes it easier for both parties involved in the communication process (you and them) and lowers the risk of miscommunication issues down the road, which could lead to confusion and escalate to anger or frustration.

6. Provide adequate resources

Give access to tools, documents, people and/or training.

In order to delegate effectively, you need to make sure that your team has all of the resources they need in order to complete the project successfully. You should provide:

• Access to the right software, tools and equipment
• Access to support from other teams and budget as needed
• Access to data points
• Up-to-date documents and information about how things work, both internally and externally

Try to do this ahead of time so they don’t have to ask for help every time something goes wrong (which can cause frustration and slow down productivity). For example, if you want someone on your team to be able to send an email out to customers, but they don't have access to your email software, they won't be able to do it.

If someone has never done something before, make sure that you invest time into training them. This helps to advance and deepen their skills. A trained team member will be able to deliver more quickly since they don't have to waste time figuring things out on their own. Furthermore, they'll feel empowered instead of getting that sinking feeling of being thrown into the deep end of a pool with no context. You've been there before and know what it feels like, so make sure you don't re-create that horrible experience for someone else!

7. Give feedback throughout the process

Check in and give clear, actionable feedback with examples.

One of my favorite mantras is Trust, but verify. Always trust that your team members can perform and deliver on time, and give them freedom to carry out the project in their style, but remember to verify that they're delivering on time, and to the quality standards you've agreed upon.

With regular check-ins, something goes wrong or takes longer than expected, you can address it right away rather than waiting for the final deadline to pass, then having an issue with quality control or deadlines being missed.

Provide team members with feedback during the process so they can adjust accordingly if necessary. Don't wait till the end to share what you're thinking.

Make sure you praise good work when it's done. This helps your team members feel a sense of accomplishment and motives them to continue doing good work.

If something is not delivered to your expectations, don't shy away from giving negative feedback, but remember to do so with care.

For example: "I'm glad that you were able to get all of these tasks done in time. Can I give you some guidance or advice for improvement? I noticed that some of them weren't completed as thoroughly as others, like [task] which could have been better [area of improvement] " Specific, timely and actionable feedback helps your team member learn from their mistakes so that next time around they'll be able to do an even better job.

Remember to ask for feedback as well - it's always a two-way street.

8. Offer help, but don't take over

Provide a teaching opportunity, not an opportunity to micromanage.

Don't delegate, then walk away. You don't want your team members to feel like they're working in a vacuum, or even worse, that they don't have the autonomy or support you promised them. Always be available for questions, and offer help when you're asked for it.

Some questions you can ask your team members include:

• Are there any blockers that you're facing?
• How can I help unblock you?
• What is your biggest challenge right now?
• Do you have any ideas for how we could improve this process?
• Do you need anything from anyone that you're not getting?
• What could I do to make you more successful in this project?

Are you a perfectionist? Resist the urge to step in and finish up tasks in an unsolicited manner for your team members. By micromanaging your team, you undermine their confidence. Instead, offer guidance and help unblock them. Take a fail-forward approach and treat any potential failures as a learning lesson.

P.S. You really don't need to approve every single thing, or be cc-ed in all the emails. Trust your team to make the right decisions.

9. Be flexible and open to suggestions

Keep an open mind to ideas and suggestions.

Remember that your team members are incredible people with great ideas, unique perspectives and skills. You may have an idea of how things should be done, but your team members might come up with ways of doing things that you hadn't thought of before, or even find better solutions than the ones you had originally planned on implementing. If they do, don't be afraid to try them out and see if they work!

10. Conduct a retrospective

Close the loop by holding a retrospective meeting to reflect and improve.

Once the task is complete, run a quick retrospective session with your team members to identify strengths and weaknesses in the process, so you're set up for success the next time round.

Questions to ask:

• What went well?
• What could be improved?
• What lessons can we draw from this experience and apply to future projects?

Listen actively and record down your learnings in a retrospective document that you can refer back to when you start something new.

To improve how you delegate, there are some self-reflection questions that you can ruminate upon as well:

• Did my team member understand what I was asking them to do?
• If not, how can I improve my communication in this area?
• How well did my team member carry out their end of the task, and was it done on time?
• If there were any issues along the way - for example, if they needed help from me or someone else - how can I avoid these problems next time by giving clearer instructions?

11. Always give credit

Give kudos where they are due, don't steal credit for others' work.

Never steal credit for your team member's hard work, or let team members steal credit from others. It breeds mistrust and makes team members feel unmotivated, unappreciated and ultimately, resentful.

If someone has done great work, give them kudos and shoutouts (public and/or private) where appropriate. This helps them develop confidence in their abilities and build trust. If there is a team-wide or client-facing presentation, give them the opportunity to present their work if they are willing to.

Conclusion

Hope you enjoyed this tactical guide which outlines the steps, tips, and tactics that you can use to effectively delegate as a leader. Remember, delegation is a learnable skill that can be practiced. I promise you'll get better at doing it the more you try.

To continue learning more about how to lead better, and read useful articles for personal growth plus discover cool tools while you're at it, do subscribe to my newsletter at BrainPint.com

Ever spend time typing the same thing over & over again? I used to! One of the best things I've done for my productivity is starting to use text shortcuts 3 years ago to avoid repetitive typing as much as possible. This has helped me cut down on time spent and reduce potential errors.

How Do Text Shortcuts Work?

Text shortcuts, also known as text expansion, are a great way to type less and get more done. How it works is simple: you type in shortcuts or abbreviations and these get replaced with the desired text. This can be extremely useful for those who like to use abbreviations or have a hard time remembering long phrases.

I personally use TextExpander on my Mac to deal with this, but you can also use a few other tools like Apple's native text expansion or even Alfred's snippets.

Text Expansion Snippet Examples

It's a lot more fun when you get started on text expansion knowing some snippets you can use right off the bat, so here are some that I frequently use and wanted to share.

I use z as the prefix to most of my text snippets as it's unlikely that I start typing words with a z.

🤙 Contact

• Full name zj
• Email address @@j (create different @@ for personal & work accounts)
• Home address zadd
• Phone number(s) znum or z#
• Passport number zpassport
• Bank Details (for deposits) zacc

🌎 Internet Nooks & Crannies

• Twitter l.tw
• LinkedIn l.li
• Facebook l.fb
• Instagram l.ig
• Blog l.blog
• Newsletter l.bp (for BrainPint)
• Socials l.socials
  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/JanelSGM
  • Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/name
  • Facebook: https://facebook.com/name
  • Blog: /

🗓️ Meetings

• Scheduling links (Calendly, Savvycal)
  • I have different links for different types of calls. I start all my scheduling links with the same prefix, e.g. s30min s15min s20min
• Introductions zintro
  • Hi Max, Excited to connect! Would you be able to find some time on my scheduling link here: https://calendly.com/yourname? Happy to open up more slots on my calendar if none suit you, or use your link. Let me know! Janel
• Zoom meeting room zzoom
  • You can enter this Zoom meeting link for a quick chat: https://zoom.us/j/xxxxxxx
• "You're running late" reminder zlate or zreminder
  • I'm in the meeting now, chat with you soon here: https://zoom.us/j/xxxxxxx. If something came up and you can't make it, it's ok, we can reschedule.

🧳 Business

• Full name of your managers if they have tricky names that you always misspell mpfull
• Business mailing address zbadd
• Business account number zbacc
• Shortcuts for the list of your whole teams' email addresses @@team => janel@team.com, morris@team.com, ash@team.com, charm@team.com
• Boilerplate messages & canned email responses
• Out of office messages zooo

💬 Commonly Used Phrases

• On my way! omw
• Thanks for reading! tfr
• let me know lmk
• Cheers,
  Janel  cj

🛒 Products

• Newsletter OS website l.nos
• Podcast OS website l.pos
• Product description nosdescription

🔗 Common Links

• Affiliate links a.carrd a.airtable
• Link to FAQ page about your product, course or service zfaq
• Frequently shared Twitter threads, blog posts

🎙️ Speaker Info

• Profile pic (in Google Drive) zpic
• Short Bio  bioshort
• Long Bio biolong

😜 Other Uses

• UTM link builder zutm => utm_source=x&utm_medium=x&utm_campaign=x&utm_content=x&utm_term=x
• Autocorrect misspelled brands (WordPress)
• Auto-insert dates in different formats

• Currency (€, £) eeur ppound
• Trademarked titles ( ©, Ⓡ symbols) ccopy rregistered
• Lorem Ipsum lorem

Highly recommend trying text shortcuts / text expansion out.

At advanced stages you can use software to trigger scripts that help you count words and do a lot more fun stuff!

We’ve all been there: you receive a meeting invite at work, only to realize that you were double-booked because you already have an appointment on your personal calendar. Don’t worry, there’s a solution!

If you use more than one Google calendar in your day (home, work, side projects etc.), it's helpful to keep your various appointments in sync by copying your events from your personal Google Calendar to your work calendar.

Sync your personal calendar and work calendar for free using this step-by-step guide. It's a simple process –  I'll walk you through each step and include screenshots for easy reference. Once set up, you will be able to automatically block off time in your work calendar when personal events are created in the other calendar.  

This creates a unified overview that helps decrease the time you spend switching between calendars when trying to schedule meetings and prevents those awkward moments of asking colleagues "Oops, can we reschedule? I double-booked". The best part? You won’t need to worry about privacy with this method, because your calendar information remains private!

How Does This Work?

We'll use a Google Apps Script stored on your work Google Drive to read your personal calendar, then use that information to automatically block time on your work calendar.

Setting Up The Correct Permissions in Your Personal Account

Share your personal calendar with your work's GSuite / Google Workspace account by doing the following:

1. Login to your personal Google account.
2. Go to Calendar Settings either directly via this link. Alternatively, access it from Google Calendar by clicking the gear icon at the top right, then selecting Settings.
3. Locate the calendar you want to use on the left-hand side of the Settings page and click on it. In this case, I'm clicking on the calendar titled "Janel"

4. Click "Share with specific people", then click on "Add People"

5. Add your work email and select "See all event details", before hitting "Send".

6. Locate your Calendar ID in your personal account by scrolling down and clicking "Integrate calendar". Your calendar ID is listed under the word "Calendar ID". If you're linking to the primary calendar in a personal Gmail account, it will be your Gmail address. If it's a secondary calendar, it will be a string of characters that ends with "group.calendar.google.com". Save the Calendar ID for use in the scripts step.

Setting Up The Google App Script in Your Work Account

1. Login to your work account & go to your email inbox.
2. Open the email which should read "(insert your personal email address) has shared a calendar with you". Click "Add this calendar" to add your personal calendar to your work calendar.
3. Go to My Drive in Google Drive.
4. Click "New" on the top left corner of your Google Drive, Click "More" then "Google Apps Script"

6. Rename the script by clicking on "Untitled Project" and renaming as "Calendar Sync"

7. Remove the existing code by selecting all the text in the window and hitting backspace.

8. Go to this link to get the script for the Google Apps Script that you'll use. It's a Javascript snippet that is hosted in your Google Drive. Copy the entire snippet as shown below.

9. Come back to Google Apps Script and paste that into the body. Change the XXXXXXXXXX on line 3 the Calendar ID you have gathered from your personal account. For many of you, that will be your email.

10. Hit the floppy disk icon to Save.

11. Click Run to execute the script. If Google asks you for permissions, ensure that you accept them. When completed, you should see "Execution completed" in the Application Log.

12. Check that it worked by going to your work calendar and seeing if events are copied over from your personal calendar. They are by default titled "Personal appt" (you can change that if you want - see below) and set to private, aka event details are hidden from your colleagues.

Set Up An Automation

Schedule this script to run automatically so that your calendar is kept up to date.

1.  First click the clock icon in the left pane of Google Apps Script interface, then click "Add Trigger"

2. Feel free to copy these settings and replace the email in "Calendar owner email". This helps set up a trigger that makes the script run when there is a calendar update in your personal email account.

Congrats! You've now set up an automation. When an event is scheduled on your personal calendar, time will automatically be blocked off on your work calendar.

Optional (But Recommended) Changes

Here are some tweaks you can make to the script to make the automation work better.

Change Number Of Days In Advance To Block Off Time
Default is 7 days. On line 7, change "7” to the number of days in advance you would like the script to monitor. I reckon 30 is a good number!

Change Title Of Event
Update the text on line 15 to change what text you'd like to display on the events that are copied over to your work calendar. Default is "Personal appt" but I would change it to something like "Busy (Synced Event)"

Change Trigger For Calendar Sync
If you don't want to use calendar update as an event source (trigger) and prefer to adjust the frequency of how often the calendar gets updated, change the setting in both the time based trigger and time interval sections. Click "Save". The automation will now run every 30 minutes.

Thanks for reading this! You are now able to automatically copy events from your personal Google Calendar to your work calendar, which is a massive timesaver. If you're attempting to do the reverse, aka copying work events to your personal calendar, set up permissions in your work account and run the script from your personal account.

Hope you've found this guide to be a great alternative to scheduling / calendar management software.

P.S. Huge props to Will who wrote this useful article (from 2017) which helped me figure out how this works! I've written this piece to create the most updated step-by-step guide that has parallels to Google's updated user interfaces.

If this article has been helpful to you, I highly recommend that you subscribe to BrainPint where I often share tips and tricks on how to set yourself up for success.

It's no secret that I love to read. Between my personal email & my secondary Mailbrew inbox, I subscribe to over 70+ newsletters.

One of my tweets about my favorite newsletters once went viral, garnering almost 100k impressions. I often get questions from friends asking me for newsletter recommendations, so I thought I'd put together a list of my favorites.

In this post, I'll share the newsletters I look forward to receiving each week, by category. This comes after a serious purge.

The criteria I used to determine whether to keep newsletters or not:

• Have I read the last 3 issues?
• Do I learn something each issue?

I only recommend A-grade newsletters in my collection. Welcome to my gold mine:

Personal Growth, Productivity & Mental Models

• Maker Mind by Anne-Laure Le Cunff -  A weekly dose of mindful productivity that's backed with neuroscience.
• The Jungle Gym by Nick deWilde - Thoughtful writing about careers, personal growth and trends.
• Perspectives by Deb Liu - Useful life & career advice that helps you grow and challenges the way you do things.
• 3-2-1 by James Clear - Actionable insights and important questions you should reflect on.
• Farnam Street by Shane Parrish - Brain food for the curious with plenty of actionable advice and deep dives into mental models.
• The Curiosity Chronicle by Sahil Bloom - Mental models and high-signal content that helps make you a better person and enables you to understand the world better.

Product

• Product Lessons by Linda Zhang - Product, career and entrepreneurship lessons.
• Lenny's Newsletter by Lenny Ratchitsky - High-quality gems on Product Management, Growth & Community
• Product Life by Will Lawrence - Concise, actionable and (often) surprising tools to grow as a product manager.

Creator Economy & Newsletters

• For The Interested by Josh Spector - Actionable resources to help creators produce, promote and earn from their creators. Super informative.
• Cybernaut by Fadeke Adegbuyi - A deep dive into Internet culture and what it means to us.
• Li's Newsletter - When the OG of the Passion Economy writes, you have to stop and read.
• Not A Newsletter by Dan Oshinsky - Everything you need to know about the latest in the newsletter sphere.

Tools

• Wonder Tools by Jeremy Kaplan - Learn about new tools every week. I always discover gems here.
• Creativerly by Philipp Temmel - All about creativity & productivity-boosting tools.

Trends

• Trends.vc by Dru Riley - Concise, 5-minute reports that expose you to emerging trends, while giving you enough fodder to dig in more at your own time
• In Bed With Social by Marie Dolle - Deep, well-researched, yet light-hearted dives into trends.
• Trends by The Hustle - Fun nuggets of information about obvious & non-obvious trends

Entrepreneurship

• Indie Hackers - An odyssey into the world of startups, bootstrappers and indie hackers

Marketing

• Zero To Marketing by Andrea Bosoni - Case studies on how founders should start thinking about marketing
• Marketing Examples by Harry Dry - Crisp & clear examples of marketing messages.

Medley

• Wellness Wisdom
• Trevor McKendrick
• P.S. Remember that BrainPint is also a medley!

Business & Strategy

• Morning Brew
• Napkin Math in the Every bundle by Evan Armstrong
• Declarative Statements by Katelyn Donnelly
• Not Boring by Packy McCormick

Investing

• Clouded Judgement - SaaS analysis
• Meritech Capital - S-1 breakdowns
• Software Stack Investing - Deep dives into SaaS
• I have created a public SaaS weekly digest here (read by ~600 people!)

Others

• Sidekick - A curated party in a box. All things weird, useful, fun and wonderful
• Remotely Interesting by Marissa Goldberg - The best companion anyone working and leading remotely should have in their inbox.

Hope that has been a useful glimpse into my reading diet. To learn how I curate, read this post. To read my curations, subscribe to BrainPint.

The no-code and low-code space is heating up. More companies are using no-code tools to help employees create internal tools and MVPs. At the same time, aspiring founders without a technical background no longer need to rely on developers to bring their ideas to life.

I'm excited about this and have started to track which no-code startups have received funding, and where possible, their current valuations.

I will keep this list up to date and keep adding companies along the way. The statistics below only include information from the latest funding round.

Last updated Feb 2023

• Adalo - Series A - $8 million (May 2021) Source
• Airtable - Series F - $735 million at $11 billion valuation (Dec 2021) Source
• Bardeen - Series A - $15.3 million (June 2022) Source
• Bubble - Series A - $100 million (July 2021) Source
• Bryter - Series B - $66 million (April 2021) Source
• Coda - Series D - $100 million at $1.4 billion valuation (July 2021) Source
• Retool - Series D $45 million at $3.2 billion valuation (July 2022) Source
• Rows - Series B - $16 million (Feb 2021) Source
• Stacker - Series A - $20 million (April 2021) Source
• Softr - Series A - $13.5 million (January 2022) Source
• Landbot - Series A - $8 million (January 2021) Source
• Notion - Series C - $275 million at $10 billion valuation (Oct 2021) Source
• n8n - Series A - $12 million (April 2021) Source
• Obviously.ai - Seed - $4.7 million (July 2021) Source
• Typeform - Series C - $135 million (March 2022) Source
• Webflow - Series C - $120 million at $4 billion valuation (Mar 2022) Source

Instead of committing to a huge thing in 2020, I dabbled in many small things while discovering the unique intersection between my passion and skills.

People always tell you to find a niche and double down on it. I got trapped by this early in my journey, until I realized that you can't find one unless you truly explore your curiosity.

My conversation with my friend Nathan Sudds (who, by the way, is an amazing life coach) opened my eyes up to the fact that life is an experiment. It's ok to have a bad experiment. When you zoom out far enough, life just becomes a line.

Explore your curiosity and go as far down the rabbit hole as it leads you. I promise you that you'll find your people and discover what you love.

But dig deep. Go broad. Have meaningful conversations with other builders and learners.

When I tell people I love hitchhiking, I'm normally met with a blank stare or an incredulous, "Are you crazy, that's so dangerous!"

Here's why I like it so much:

No real plans or agendas.
No responsibilities.
No rules.
No rush. (Besides beating the sunset)

Just full enjoyment of uncharted paths and unexpected connections on the open road. Trust in complete strangers.

Plus the coolest people and conversations - I’ve been invited to many homes for beers and rakija and even granny’s sandwiches. It’s amazing how some people just dazzle you with their brilliance and charm.

People have the misconception that people only hitchhike because they are low on money. Untrue! There's a whole world of magic hitchhiking offers when you let the events of the day unfold.

Things hitchhiking taught me:

• Being able to talk to anyone is a skill everyone can learn
• You don't need to speak the same language to communicate
• Serendipity is free –  all you need is an open mind
• How to trust my gut when making split-second decisions
• How to deal with rejection – I've spent hours watching hundreds of cars whizz by, but managed to still keep a smile on my face till someone picked me up!
• The importance of planning, yet being able to pivot when things don't work out
• Cardboard + markers are your best friend, but your biggest asset is your smile

Ever since I started by hitching a ride on a fresh-out-of-the factory car in 2014, I’ve hitchhiked a lot, sitting in rides with chain-smoking Croatians, speeding Schumacher-loving Montenegrins, suit-wearing Slovenians, holidaying Koreans and Belgians, fun Chileans with kids and even the General Manager of a pisco distillery. Old people, young people, couples and singles, it’s always been fun.

I'm still friends with some people whose cars I've ridden for a short while.

I owe the friends who introduced this open-hearted way of experiencing travel to me a huge thank you. Try it someday when the world opens up again, as a hitchhiker, or as someone who offers a ride. You'll feel alive.

Building a digital product doesn't have to be expensive. You can get a single product up & running (without code!) for less than $50, and sell as many as you'd like.

In this post I'll share about the tools I've used to create, promote and provide customer service for Newsletter Operating System, which has recently crossed 1,000 sales and been featured on Mashable & Indie Hackers.

Most of these tools are free, and the rest are relatively affordable*. I've split them into 4 main categories: Product, Landing Page & Sales, Graphics & Marketing, Customer Service.

* There are some affiliate links in this post that I might make a commission off, at no extra cost to you. I only recommend good stuff that I personally pay for, as usual.

Product

Notion
The actual product is built on Notion. Newsletter OS is a Notion template that customers can duplicate to their personal workspaces immediately after purchase.

Notion has a generous free personal plan that works perfectly for this, but if you choose to upgrade to the Personal Pro plan like I did, it costs $4/month.

If you're brand new to Notion, check out Marie Poulin's or Daniel Canosa's YouTube Channels to learn more!

Icons: Icons8, Flaticon
I decided to use icons instead of emojis in my Notion pages as I wanted to keep my dashboard looking consistent! I used some free icons from Icons8 and paid for Flaticon Pro to use some beautiful premium icons.

GIFs: GIPHY
Sometimes you just want to add a dash of fun into your dashboards. GIFs are great for that little sprinkle of happiness.

Screenshots: Cleanshot X
I needed to take many screenshots and screen recordings, firstly, to act as a guide for people who were new to Notion, and secondly, to make graphics for promotion. Cleanshot is a tool for Mac that enables you do it effortlessly. It's available for a one-time payment of $29 or as one of the apps in a Setapp bundle for $9.99/month!

Videos to GIFs: Ezgif
Before I learned about the full powers of Cleanshot, I used Ezgif to convert my videos into GIFs for free. Yes, it has a lot of ads, but it's free and doesn't watermark your GIFs!

Color Palette: Colors & Fonts
Used this site to get the color schemes for one section (Brand Assets). Michael Andreuzza, the creator of Colors & Fonts helped me out with the design elements. He also used Open Peeps for illustrations.

Link Shortener: Switchy
I like to create custom, shortened links when I'm sending out updates for my product, or when I'm creating affiliate offers. Switchy is my swiss-army knife for doing this.

Isn't it a lot nicer to go to: https://go.newsletteros.com/airtable instead of https://airtable.com/invite/r/zLodM0w7? It's a lot easier to remember too. Plus, I get to track how many clicks I get on links and change the meta images & text when doing social sharing.

It's currently available as a lifetime deal on AppSumo.

Landing Page & Sales

Landing Page & Hosting: Carrd
Carrd is an amazing no-code landing page builder that's simple to use and customizable. I made my landing page from scratch using Carrd's drag and drop builder and a little bit of CSS.

There's a free version of Carrd and Pro Standard (which gives you the ability to build 10 sites, with custom domains & hosting included) starts from $19/year. I'm on Pro Plus for $49/year, which gives me the ability to build 25 sites.

Domain: Namecheap
Namecheap is the only domain registrar I use because of their fair pricing, free WHOIS protection service, and excellent customer support. I got the .com domain for $8 (1 year). Ditch GoDaddy (seriously, they are predatory) and go for Namecheap! Other reputable domain registrars with fair prices include Gandi & Porkbun.

Sales & Payments: Gumroad's Creator Plan
Gumroad helps me to handle distribution, taxes and emails.

Gumroad is free to use. You pay a percentage of the sale which is really reasonable!

With Gumroad's custom workflows, I'm also able to trigger a thank you email with instructions on how to use the product after customers purchase it.

Click To Share: Share Link Generator
Free tool I use to generate "tweet this" links. I try to encourage my customers to tweet about my product so that they expose it to their audiences. I do this by creating a pre-filled tweet on the site and giving my customers a link that they can click!

Just got access to Newsletter OS by @JanelSGM!

Excited to use this @NotionHQ dashboard to curate, write and grow my newsletter.

It's so valuable & actionable.

Check it out →
NewsletterOS.com

Maker Widget
A little widget I embed on the bottom left of my landing page which has links to my website, social media profiles and other projects. Free, with a pro upgrade available for a $5 one-time fee.

Graphics & Marketing

Figma
It's a free collaborative web tool that I used to create the promotional graphics for Twitter and my Product Hunt launch.

Mockups Design
Download PSD mockup files that you can use to make your product shine (and look a lot more professional!)

Even though you're creating a digital product, it never hurts to snazz it up a little when creating marketing material. Doesn't this box look great?

Customer Service

Chatbot: Crisp Chat
I placed a chatbot on my landing page to make myself more accessible to customers, and open up a new line of communications. Crisp Chat is free, unintrusive and has a companion mobile app that I can respond to queries from. I

Scheduling Tool: SavvyCal
I use this to schedule consultation calls with people who purchase the 30-minute consultation add-on. I prefer Savvycal over Calendly due to its' stacked features, which include availability presets, limit on scheduling frequency and the mindful aspect where the person scheduling with you can overlay their calendars.

Feedback: Airtable - I use Airtable's form to collect customer feedback. It has a generous free plan.

Email: Gmail - Believe it or not, I still answer customer support questions via my personal Gmail account. If it's not broken, no need to fix it.

Video Calls: Zoom
I hold my calls on Zoom. Zoom's personal plan gives you the ability to make 1:1 calls up to 40 minutes. If you need to make longer calls, you can consider using Google Meet.

Bonus

Copy: Copy.ai

Few people know this, but I didn't write this tagline "Master the art of creating & running a newsletter" myself

It comes from this tweet by Chris Lu, co-founder of Copy.ai, who generated it by harnessing the power of AI 🤯. If you struggle with copy, I definitely recommend using this tool to make your writing easier & more effective.

Monthly Cost

I've done a few calculations and this is how much I spend monthly.

• Carrd ~$4/month
• Namecheap - $0.75/month
• Savvycal - $12/month
• Gumroad -$10/month (update 2022: it's free! they just charge a %)
• Notion Personal Pro - $4/month
• Flaticon Pro ~$4/month

Total Cost: $34.75

All I need to do is sell a single copy of Newsletter Operating System ($49 before fees) to recoup these costs. I'm fortunate that I'm continuing to get a steady flow of sales and am very grateful.

--
The original tweet behind this post can be found here. If you have any questions, feel free to tweet @JanelSGM!