Today’s guest is Ernie Smith, a longtime writer for nonprofits and membership associations. He also has a lot of experience in graphic design, content strategy, content management systems, newsletter creation, and content.

Ernie is also a tech writer — that includes writing about technology for Vice magazine — and Ernie is a self-proclaimed tech nerd. His name and voice might sound familiar because I just had him on the ChatGPT episode a few weeks ago. That was episode 156. 

So, I thought he was the perfect person to come on the show and introduce us to a variety of tech tools that we might want to try out for our businesses. 

We broke this discussion down into various categories of tools, ones that can help with writing, note-taking, audio recording, scheduling meetings, graphic design, and newsletter platform tools. Ernie shares dozens of tools and also talks a bit about the benefits of publishing our own newsletter. 

In this episode, we talk about: 

• Writing tools, including Markdown, Bear, Obsidian, iA writer, Lex AI
• Tool to synchronize programs between computers and phones: Syncthing
• Google Docs feature we might not be taking advantage of
• Note-taking tools: Markdown, Evernote, Notion
• Task management tools: Flow Pomodoro timer
• Meeting and interview recording: Otter.ai, Rev
• Audio routing: Loopback
• Scheduling meetings: Calendly 
• The benefits of publishing your own newsletter
• Newsletter platforms: Substack, Beehiiv, Ghost, Newsletter Glue (a WordPress plug-in)
• Graphic design tools: Canva, Pixelmator, Affinity Photo
• The importance of optimizing a few tools that are best for YOU

Resources:

• Ernie’s newsletter: Tedium.co
• Ernie on Twitter
• Ernie on Mastodon: @[email protected]
• Join the Deliberate Freelancer Facebook group. 
• Support Deliberate Freelancer at Buy Me a Coffee.
• Episode #156 of Deliberate Freelancer: The Risks and Opportunities of ChatGPT