810 – These will help your life and business: Tom talks Gadgets

Episode 810 - Gadgets
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 810 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, I'm going to talk about gadgets. These are gadgets that I have, and I'm going to break it down into some that I might buy and some that I would never buy. And these are things that make my life easier, safer, more productive and it's by far not a comprehensive list, because I got all kinds of stuff everywhere I couldn't even think of. We'll get to that in a minute. Hope you didn't miss Episode 809. Oh, my God. Jhana Li. What a dynamo young woman, right? She used the term badass all the time and she is a badass when it comes to scaling a business. So that was episode 809. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to screwthecommute.com, slash, then the episode number. Jhana was 809 and today is 810 gadgets. Check out my mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com and make sure you grab a copy of our automation book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree. You will thank me for it because it will save you hundreds and hundreds of hours fighting with your computer. So screwthecommute.com/automatefree and follow me at tiktok.com/@digitalmultimillionaire on TikTok.

[00:01:45] Okay here's some of the gadgets I use and that you might want to get a hold of one is a secure USB drives these are highly encrypted USB drives. All you have to do is Google. You know, there's loads of them out there. It's almost like the old Mission impossible, if you can remember the original ones where they'd say, okay, if you choose to accept this, and then after he heard the message, he the thing would disintegrate. Well, these things are designed so if people try to get into them too many times and don't have the password, then they wipe themselves clean, you know? So that's a cool thing. All right. Here's and these are these tips are going to be all over the place on these gadgets. I didn't put them in any order. All right. Next thing is a car cup holder. You can get these ones that have multiple things that you can hold your cell phone and extra cups and things like that. So that's a handy thing. Whistles Now, see, I live in a hurricane zone in Virginia Beach. That's not too bad compared to more south of here, but it's always good to have a whistle around. So if the house is caved in on your head, people can find you. All right. Also, and the loudest and best one ever I've found is called a storm whistle, because you can also hold it in your hand and strike with it if you're getting you know, you can put it on your keychain. It's pretty big for a keychain, but there are smaller ones for keychains that you can have with you all the time.

[00:03:17] And if you need to attract attention or blow somebody's eardrum out, whistles are good. Also, speaking of keychains, you probably want to have a keychain, flashlight or I always have a flashlight on me. And and you say, well, yeah, but my cell phone will do. Flashlight. Yeah, but that's not that convenient sometimes to be trying to use it and light up something and it's not that great for lots of things where having a little flashlight with you, really when you do it, you'll say, Oh, man, I should have done this a long time ago. Then Walkman combo tool. One of those things where I think it's called Walkman or Leatherman. Leatherman I think is called, you know, so you always have a pair of pliers, a screwdrivers, knives and stuff with you, and they have ones that are really, really tiny that fold up. I mean, they're really like a couple inches and they'll fold up on you. So so that's an interesting thing. All right. How about a remote control caddy? There's so many remote controls. We got it for the the monitors, the TVs, fans, ceiling lights, everything has a remote control nowadays. You can't find them. So a little caddy holds them all in one place. Hey, a driveway alert. I haven't installed mine yet, but this alerts you when some car or something is either coming up to your driveway or coming in your driveway.

[00:04:38] That's a good thing to know. Maybe you're waiting for somebody or maybe it's a security thing. So either way, driveway alert, remote cameras. Yeah. We have ones sitting on the door that I can see from the my bedroom, you know. So to see anybody that is at the front door or entering the front door unannounced, put it that way. All right. Here's another crazy one. It's a drink mixer and it's a little battery operated thing. That you can stick down in your drink and it mixes up your protein powder or whatever, whatever else you got. There are only a couple dollars in there. It's such a great thing. Now, here's another one I just started to use. Now, I've been using Laminators for a long time, but there's so many darn things you have to remember in life. And I bet you most of you listening to this can't don't know your own phone number or you don't know your spouse's or your kid's phone numbers by hand. They're in your phone, right? Well, what happens if you lose your phone? So I'm starting to make a series of cards and then laminating them the kind of business card size. And with all the important phone numbers, you know, the electric company, if the electric goes out, gas company, you know, any emergency numbers and animal control, all these things so that they're in a printed fashion.

[00:06:00] So if the electricity is out, if your battery's dead or you lose your phone or it gets stolen or something, you can still reach people. Okay. Cable tags. This is another little gizmo gadget that costs almost nothing. But trust me, when you go to try to you got all these cables going into your computer and to your monitors. And on this in this podcast thing, I got wires going everywhere. It's it's nice to have them labeled so that if you or somebody else has to work on them, they it doesn't take them three hours to do something. It should take three minutes. So that's cable tags, colored key circles. These are little rubber plastic things that go on your keys. And so I got so darn many keys with this big retreat center and multiple vehicles and recreational RVs and ATVs and everything and locks. So I put these little plastic things on different colors and I can instantly pick the key that I want instead of trying trying 18 different keys every time. These are kind of productivity hacks here. Let's see, compressed air. It's good to have one of those little canisters to blow off stuff off your keyboards and stuff. So. So that's I don't know if that's a gadget, but it's sure handy. I keep one sitting right where I work so I can blow the keyboard off and same same idea as microfiber cloths because if you try to take like a paper towel and wipe your keyboard off or some some other thing, it's just going to create static electricity and it's going to just make a mess.

[00:07:37] So get yourself a little pack of microfiber fiber cloths for your TV and your monitors. I get portable heaters and fans. I mean, this is this is 7500ft² in the main building and 4000ft² in the other building. And a lot of a lot of times I'm by myself. There's no guests here. And it's crazy. I mean, the electric bill can be 1500 to $2000 a month if I just run everything full blast for no reason. So. So I have a lot of portable heaters and fans around. So when I'm by myself, me and the dogs are just sitting there working. There's no reason for me to heat and cool the whole darn place, you know? So portable heaters and fans will save you money. A label maker. This is kind of like the tagging your wires, but this is like, for instance, I put a new water heater in, I put a label on installed 12, 20, 22 or something, and that way I can remember when the warranty is up and things like that. And there's all kinds of things. Once you have a label maker, they're only like 20 bucks. I mean, where they get you is on the labels, you know, the little cartridges you put in there.

[00:08:49] But, you know, whoever put the the hot water heater in the first place didn't put. On or off. On the switch for it, you know, so you can label on or off. You just and there's so many switches in this house. And some of them go for the tennis courts. Some of them go for the pool light, for the the pool house out there. I don't remember what the heck they are. So you label them. Once we figure it out, put a label on it. That label maker gets a lot of use. All right, here's another little crazy gadget I get from Harbor Freight. Or you can get them anywhere. These little spring clamps, if you've got a bag of potato chips and you use those little pitiful clamps that that you get at the grocery store, they're just they just suck. There's the spring won't work and they break and they're just they don't hold tight. But for way less money, you can get these real heavy duty ones that are little tiny plastic ones that'll that'll if you put it on your arm it would, you'd scream because it pinched so hard. So I buy them like ten at a time for like $0.89 a piece and I have them all over the kitchen and all over the house to hold things when I want them. Let's see. Yeah, that's clamps. All right.

[00:10:07] A small knife having a knife handy all the time. I always have a knife on me. And people say, well, that's a weapon. Well, it's out of the last 20 years, I've been carrying a knife. It's never been used as a weapon, but it's probably opened a thousand Amazon boxes. Right? So. So having a knife handy with you, you can have the little tiny one on a keychain. I have a folder in my pocket and it's mostly used for for that open in boxes. Oh, this is a really cool one. This is. Remember I told you I don't like to heat and cool the whole house when nobody's here. Well, still, I'm working and my hands get cold. And I have this thing. It's called a hand warmer. It's electric. You charge it up, and it's also doubles as a battery bank. So it'll charge your cell phone like 10 or 15 times if you need it to. But in the meantime, it'll it'll be a hand warmer for you because I'll tell you what. What gets cold, this will crack you up my mouse finger because I'm always working like crazy and it's sticking out there. So that hand warmer battery bank. Oh, man, that gets a lot of use. And I also have a little cheap infrared thermometer too, just to check. I check the dog's temperature with it and I check food and all kinds of things, and they're really, really cool.

[00:11:34] But I also have a stab thermometer. This is one that's on a long, pointy thing. And for a couple of reasons, you can check the internal temperature of steaks and pork, especially turkey. But. You can also keep an eye on your air conditioner in your car. You can stick it in the vent and see what kind of if you feel like, geez, my air conditioner is not working as good as, you know, you can actually put it in the vent and see what temperature you're getting out of the vent so that you can say, oh man, yeah, this, this needs charged up or whatever. You can feel it, right. But you really like to have some actual figures. And then if you do put the, the refrigerant in yourself, which I do, then I can see the temperature come down to the level it's supposed to be. And I know I've got got it done. So that's a little stab thermometer. And another thing, I didn't start using these and still until I started doing a lot of TikToks because you do them on your phone and my fat fingers are just always trouble editing and doing stuff. So I saw this one person that was doing a tutorial using a little stylus, and these are super cheap. You can get three of them for ten bucks on Amazon. They have a little rubber thing on on one end and it works beautiful on any kind of cell phone or tablet instead of using your finger.

[00:12:59] And it's way more precise, you know, when you try to do something precisely move the cursor somewhere and your your fingers. Got it. Three characters over. This is very precise. So that's a a pen stylus. And then the last thing on the list of things I actually use all the time and then we'll get into what I might buy. And what I'm never going to buy is an air purifier because I got these dogs all over the place. And so keeping the air clean with all their dog fur and everything is is something. So an air purifier. Okay. Now now, these are some things I saw that I put like in my wish list or I might buy. And this is a thing called a stream deck. And this is mostly used by gaming people, which I am not. But what it is, it's a little thing that sits on your desk that's got buttons on it, and the buttons can be programmed. So you hit one button and it goes to the website, logs you in. I mean, I mean it'll, it'll go to five different websites at once if you need them to. If you're going to do a certain project that has a lot of different not only websites programs I mean you can program it to do whatever you want, but you can hit one button.

[00:14:17] You probably need a little geek help to set it up. But once you set it up, you hit that one button and things you do all the time and it'll just save you a lot of time. So that's called a stream deck, wireless phone charger. You know, I've never jumped on that bandwagon, but it certainly is a hassle. These cords are so expensive and then the tips wear out on them and then you got to go buy another one. Some are $30 for a charging cord, which is just crazy. So wireless phone charger, probably get one of that. Then. I've been seeing ads for these things called photo sticks and you can plug it in. It's a USB thing. You plug it in and it sucks off all your photos. I think it'll do whatever photo formats that are out there or whatever you tell it, JPEGs, PNGs and or the or the most standard ones. But that's a pretty handy thing to have just to get them all backed up in one place. So that's a photo stick. Then another thing I was thinking about is these things called smart bulbs. Bulbs controlled from your cell phone so you can turn the lights on and off from your cell phone. You can do it remotely. You can set different moods and different levels. If you get up in the morning, you don't like real bright lights.

[00:15:37] You can start working with lower and bring them up during the day. So that's kind of a cool, cool thing. And it's relatively simple and inexpensive nowadays. And then the last one on the might be is I never even heard of this. It's called a camera mouse and you can pick your mouse up and take pictures of things and it'll go, it'll be directly put into your computer. And it also acts as a webcam if you want it. So so it's a camera mouse. If you just Google that, you can see, see what I'm talking about. So those are things that on my might buy list. Now here's some things I'm not going to buy for sure. This is this is I mean, not that it's not a good idea and I appreciate the ingenuity of this, but being an employer myself, I don't really I don't really like this idea, but it's called an undetectable mouse mover. Jiggler. So you can set the thing and it'll keep your, you know, some of these employers when you're working at home, keep track of. Of your screen time and they can track that stuff and what you're doing. So this thing moves your mouse around as if you're actually working while you're out at Starbucks or something. So so like I said, I'm not going to buy it. And I hope that my folks don't use it on me.

[00:17:08] But I don't have I don't have any of those keyboard analyzers on their computers when they work at home anyway. But but a lot of companies do so. So I'm not going to buy that. Let's see then. There's a this is called a tap with us tap strap, too. It's a wearable keyboard on your fingers like rings and you have no keyboard in front of you, but you pretend like you're typing on nothing. And it recognizes I mean, you must you must be a damn good keyboard or a typist to be able to do this with no keyboard in front of you. Just pretend where the letters are. So. So it's a wearable keyboard and it's also called an air gesture gesture controller. So I'm not going to buy that. Probably wouldn't fit on my fingers. Another thing I'm probably not going to buy, but I think is really great and you might want to get them for your kids or yourself. It's called a color pick pen. That's color pick color, pick pen. What it does, one end of it, you can point at a color. And it will immediately. It must have a bunch of ink inside it. It'll immediately. A create that color so you can draw on paper with that exact color that it just looked at. That is that is pretty crazy right there. But one step further, you can use a tablet and use that color painting right into your computer.

[00:18:47] Now, that is crazy, right? So it's called the color pick pick pen. Pretty crazy. I don't have a use for it, but I think it's pretty, pretty cool. And then the last thing is these Logitech true wireless gaming earbuds. I don't really like using earbuds, so I wouldn't want this, although this is pretty cool in that they're they custom mold to your ear canal so that they're extremely comfortable and they shut out outside noise and they're really great so they're called the Logitech G fits fits true wireless gaming earbuds, custom molded, fit. All right. Well, there's a little offbeat thing of just a peek into my gadget life, and a lot of those would really help you out. I know. You know, just those cable identifiers alone. I mean, just when you need them. Oh, my God. It just saves you enormous amounts of time tracking down wires. And that's just one of that big list I gave you. So. So anyway, there's a little gadget thing. Go out and get some of these things. None of them cost much money. And and I think it'll help your productivity and safety. Get those get that storm whistle boy keep that in your with you and you can punch somebody out and blow their eardrums out at the same time. Okay. And also check out the mentor program at GreatInternetMarketingTraining.com. All right. We'll catch you all in the next episode. See you later.