Leverage: Optimize, Automate, Outsource: Productivity Tips, Virtual Assistant Insights, Outsourcing, Life Hacks, And More

Each episode of Optimize Automate Outsource is aimed at helping you find the tools you need to be more effective in the things that matter to your life. This episode features articles, practices Ari and Nick are applying in their own lives, and a few services. Listen in to the conversation to hear how job flexibility/workplace flexibility is becoming more of a draw for talent, how the presence of your smartphone in the room can lead to cognitive limitations, how email can be used as a task manager, and more. Job flexibility is becoming more and more important to job seekers If you’re trying to build a company you know how competitive the job market is right now. People with the talent and attitude you need are in high demand - so you need every advantage you can get. Surveys are showing that one of the things job seekers are looking for is job or workplace flexibility. Is there any way you can provide that? If so, you might have the edge in getting the talent you need. Ari and Nick talk about an article that

You may have heard of this concept before, but since so many applications and forms require you to provide a physical address, services have popped up that allow you to get a “virtual mailbox” that qualifies. Sounds a bit confusing, but it works. On this episode, Ari and Nick also discuss a new virtual mailbox service, robotic furniture that is very practical and space-saving, alternatives for security deposits for tenants and landlords, department-store-like kiosks that can be placed anywhere, and much more. Be sure you listen to hear some of the latest services and apps that can make your life more effective. Robotic furniture - really? Yes, and it’s very cool. If you live in a small or micro apartment, or even a tiny house one company has come up with a solution that can save you tons of space and make your living situations more practical. Ori has created a number of different furniture pieces that convert from one form to another at the touch of a button. It’s a great idea that is starting to get tractio

There are so many ways technology is making our lives better and one of the reasons Ari and Nick do these OAO episodes is to make you aware of what’s becoming available. On this episode, they highlight a new service that uses A.I. to predict successful cancer treatment for individual patients, another that uses A.I. to match job seekers with the best companies for them, apps that find you the best rideshare rate on-demand, and ways you can better assess potential candidates for team fit. As mentioned, it’s amazing what tech is accomplishing for us. You can hear the details about these apps and more on this episode of Optimize Automate Outsource. Now Doctors are Predicting Successful Cancer Treatment with the help of A.I. Over 150 cancer therapies are currently on the market and there’s never been an easy way to decide which drug will be best for individual patients. Until now. Oncobox applies personalized genetic profiling to help oncologists decide which drug to use for a particular patient. Its success rate

Most of us use much more electricity than we realize. In this episode of Optimize Automate Outsource, Ari shares his experience using a new electricity usage monitor and how its recommendations have cut his electricity bills significantly. Ari and Nick also speak about a new on-demand parking service, an air purification system that uses free radicals to clean the air, a kids meal delivery service, and more so make sure you set aside the time to find out about these new services and apps. An electricity usage monitor that does some pretty amazing things. Ari recently began using The Sense, an electricity usage monitor that detects when the appliances and devices in your home are being used. It can make recommendations about their usage and give you ideas for cutting your utility consumption. In a short matter of time, Ari's family has been able to reduce their electricity bill to just $60 per month. The applications for a device like this are pretty significant and can make a huge impact on the planet. Listen

This episode of Optimize, Automate, Outsource has a wide variety of interesting apps and resources as usual, so listen up to hear Ari and Nick chat about a great language app Nick’s been using (it includes gamification), how you can create parent-child relationships between Trello cards using a new service, how healthcare professionals can become “on demand” workers, the automation of IPOs, robotic scanning of documents and more. Oh yeah, and Nick tells about his sponge roller water bottle too - it’s all on this episode. A free language app the includes gamification and recorded examples for pronunciation. If you haven’t heard of Duolingo yet you really do need to check it out. It’s an entirely free app that can teach you foreign languages in fun and interactive ways. Ari has used it in the past to brush up on his French and Nick is using it presently. What’s fun about it is that you can learn as you play games - and you can even hear words in your language of choice spoken to you if you’re having a hard time

What if you developers out there could get qualified, accurate feedback about the software code you write, anytime you need it? It’s possible through a new on demand code review service from Pull Request. It will enable you to add another layer to your quality checks to ensure that the code you’re about to make live is right and works as it should. You can hear about how the service works and the benefits it will add to your workflow - along with Ari and Nick’s thoughts about it and a handful of other new services, on this episode of Optimize, Automate, Outsource. Need to take screenshots of other sites periodically (like your competition)? Automate it. In high-competition niches, it’s important to stay abreast of everything your competition is doing. You want to know the changes they are making to their service as soon as possible so that you can pivot your offerings and stay competitive. It’s not a big deal to check out their website from time to time, but it’s also not the best use of your time. That’s why

Don’t you just HATE it when earbuds hurt your ears? Now there’s a better way. On this episode of Optimize, Automate, Outsource Ari tells about the new custom molded earbuds he received from Hello Ear. In short, he loves them. The company uses a picture of your ear to craft a set of earbuds for you that fit perfectly and feel good. Really, they feel good - no more pain when you listen to our podcast! Find out more about getting your own custom molded earbuds on this episode. When is the last time you wrote a check from your bank account? Ari and Nick have not had a regular use for traditional bank checks for years. But when they come across the need for one they’ve resorted to going to the bank to get a certified or cashier’s check. Now there’s a new option - Checkbook.io enables you to send checks from your own bank account via their online dashboard, and you can even set it up to send checks for you at regular intervals. Find out how to use it on the off chance you need a bank check by listening to this epis

Ari is flying solo on this episode - Nick is once again out of the country, visiting one of the 17 time zones the Leverage team is spread across. But the resources Ari has to share are pretty interesting, nonetheless. He highlights a new service that is essentially an employment board that offers jobs for felons - the 70 million people who have been formerly incarcerated and find it difficult to get a job as a result. He’s also going to introduce you to a service that enables you to get compensated for delayed or canceled flights, and tells you how you can use another free service to track the places in your shared accounts where you might be vulnerable. It’s all on this episode of Optimize, Automate, Outsource. Providing jobs for felons could be a really good thing for your company. It’s a normal thing for employers to be skeptical of hiring people with a criminal record. But many times, though the people in question have served their time and have truly reformed, their past haunts them still. A new service

You’ve heard it said that money can’t buy you happiness - and that’s right. But it appears that money can buy time, which in turn can contribute to greater amounts of happiness. On this episode of Optimize, Automate, Outsource, Ari discusses an article that reveals that those who spend as little as $40 a week buying back the time it takes to do various tasks (picking up dry cleaning, cleaning the house, etc.) are finding their happiness levels rising. Why is that? Ari discusses it on this episode. Digital fine art that looks authentic and enriches your home. One of the problems with fine art is that while the average person may enjoy it, they only get to do so in a museum or through inheriting it from a rich family member. The cost of purchasing fine art is far outside of most people’s budget. That’s where The Depict Frame comes in. It’s a digital frame that provides realistic looking fine art for the average person. A one-time purchase could fill your home with the finest of fine art. You should check it out

For those who really love their pets and can’t imagine being without them, there is an amazing new technology you'll love. You can now pay to have your dog’s DNA collected so that in the event of the loss of your pet you can have a genetically identical clone of your pet created. Really, the technology to do it is here. Find out more about cloning your pet on this episode. If you’re searching for the perfect energy bar, look no further. Ari’s friend, Ben Greenfield, of Ben Greenfield Fitness Systems, has been on a quest to create the perfect energy bar - and now he’s got it perfected and available to the public. It’s not Paleo, it’s not Vegan. It’s just a clean, hypoallergenic and guilt-free energy bar packed with ingredients that support energy, muscle gain, and fat loss - and no unhealthy chemicals. Ari introduces it on this episode. Hyperloop One has been approved for the east coast of the United States. Elon Musk has been leading the charge for a while to get a high-speed transportation system established

Text analysis: What in the world is THAT? Let’s consider a use case: Imagine you have a blog or social media channel where your followers or clients interact with you regularly. Someone on your team is tasked to respond appropriately to those inquiries and comments. What if you could automate a classification of those comments and instantly redirect them to the right team member? You just skipped a step in the existing process. You just saved time and increased effectiveness. That’s what text analysis can do for you. Find out about Monkey Learn, a new test analysis and machine learning platform on this episode. Did you ever want a go kart as a kid? You never imagined one like this! Most of us wanted a motorized something to zip around on as a kid - you know, something we could ride around the neighborhood to the envy of all the other kids? Technology is improving those options for the next generation - and with digital tools that enable kids to be protected through appropriate parental oversight. You can find

On this episode of Optimize, Automate, Outsource, Ari and Nick have another handful of apps and services to point out for your consideration. They cover a new free encryption service for website owners, an always-on communication device, a new “wait in line” service in New York, and a video-based daily catch-up app for teams. Oh, and don’t forget about the online legal services company, UpCounsel. You’ll find all of them on this episode of OAO. Online legal services that don’t cost you an arm and a leg. Online legal services may sound a bit risky, but consider this: UpCounsel works directly with former big law partners, senior associates, and general counsels who average over 14 years of experience from top-ranked law firms and Fortune 500 companies. The lawyers who work for them (and you) have graduated from some of the best law schools in the world. They regularly verify the lawyers in the network and their active client review system provides full transparency, allowing new clients (you) to select the righ

As they guys do on every episode of Optimize, Automate, Outsource, this episode features them sharing a handful of resources they’ve come across that may help you increase your productivity and success. But before they get into the apps and services, Nick has an update on his recent trip to the team villa in St. Martin, why he went, and what the Leverage team hopes to use the property for in the months and years ahead. It’s a great perk for the team and they’re even trying out the AirBnB approach for the property while it’s not in use. Find out more, on this episode. The text analysis service, Monkey Learn is a game changer. What might you be able to accomplish - in terms of automation and productivity - if you could turn tweets, emails, documents, webpages, or anything else you can think of into actionable data, automatically? That’s what Monkey Learn does. Its powerful API can automate many of your business processes and save you hours of manual data processing. It even has Zapier and Google Doc integration

Every kid hates making their bed - OK, maybe not every kid, but most kids. Stop the hate - the smart duvet is here. It’s an automated blanket/comforter for your bed that not only makes the bed for you via an inflatable membrane, it also controls the temperature of the bed in two zones, one for your side, another for theirs. Nick was pretty impressed with this one, so he’s going to look into it. At the very least it could save you some time each morning. Just press the button on the smartphone app and go. Smart Duvet. Wow. The ultimate most affordable family bike. Yep, it’s a FAMILY bike. The Taga bike 2.0 is on Indiegogo right now and it’s a pretty amazing thing to see. Ari is thinking about getting one to take the kids to school in the fall. Essentially, it is a modular, adaptable bike that you can modify to fit your needs. What does that mean? You can carry cargo, or kids, pets, add on a stroller, and it is a 3-wheeled bike - so it’s stable. It’s also able to fold up so you can easily store it. What more do

To start off this episode, Ari and Nick chat about their experience with a new sponsor, InsideTracker, a service that provides blood analysis services for those who are interested in optimizing their health from a blood chemistry perspective. Ari and Nick chat about their results, the tweaks they’re making as a result, and why they think it’s helpful for most people to do blood analysis work regularly. If you’d like to try out InsideTracker, you can get 15% by using the link in the show notes for this episode.  Professional graphic artists on demand to enhance your photos.  We’ve all had the experience of taking a quick photo with our smartphone and needing to get it touched up. But how many of us know a professional graphic artist who can do that for us quickly and in a cost-effective manner? That’s where Tweak comes in. It’s an app that allows you to submit a photo for correction or touch-ups and a professional graphic artist will do the work and return the photo to you, pronto. Imagine what this could mean

Pulsed Electromagnetic Stimulation (PEMS) has nearly 50 years of medical/neurological applications and scientifically-proven health benefits and on today’s episode of OAO, we discuss a new device - the Elf Emmit that has come on the scene to help you align your body with your mind. It sounds a bit odd and requires that you wear a funky headband with a cable running to your smartphone, but if it works, it’s really cool. Pulsed Electromagnetic Stimulation devices may be something you should put on your radar, and you can check out one such device on this episode. A travel adapter you won’t mind using.  Most travel adapters are bulky and don’t always work like you expect. But those days are gone with the advent of Micro, a mini-travel adaptor that’s got Ari very excited. On this episode of OAO, the guys talk about this new device and why it’s an extreme upgrade from the traditional travel adapters that have been around for years. And this one has a surge protector fuse to keep your devices safe. If you travel in

This episode of OAO is a bit different because we have some observations to share about the lessons we learned at our recent Leverage team retreat. It was great to be eyeball to eyeball with each other. We discovered many things that could make our relationships and workflow better. Now that we’re back we’re seeing great results, already. We hope the insights we learned can help you as you build your own optimized, automated, and outsourced empire.   The power of being “in person” is huge. Don’t underestimate it.   Here at Leverage, we pride ourselves on moving quickly. We make fast decisions and take action rapidly. But at our recent team retreat, we saw how much faster things go in-person. Simple things - like the time it takes to give input and receive feedback are dramatically impacted in positive ways when you can be face to face, even for a short amount of time. So yes, you can and should build and effective remote team, but do what you can to get together in person as you are able. You’ll find the bene

Ari often refers to one of his favorite blogs, “Barking Up The Wrong Tree” and on this episode, he starts the show referring to an article there entitled “How to Make Life Magical,” and as you can tell my the title, it’s about how to live a magical life. But this particular list is all science-based, so it merits attention. In typical style, Ari and Nick’s banter is almost as interesting as the article itself - almost. Nike’s quest to break the 2-hour marathon barrier. Human performance is a large part of what’s behind the quest to live a magical life - and one of the current barriers being undertaken in a quest to increase human performance is the quest to break the 2 hour marathon barrier. Currently, Dennis Kimetto of Kenya holds the world record for the fastest marathon at 2 hours, 2 minutes, and 57 seconds. But Nike is pouring tons of resources into pushing past that 2-hour mark. On this episode Ari and Nick chat about their efforts. One of the most amazing Olympic races ever: The 2008 Men’s Swim Relay As

Welcome to this episode of Optimize, Automate, Outsource - as usual, we have some great apps and products for you to check out. One of the problems with time tracker apps is that they typically don’t allow you to differentiate the reasons behind your jaunts to Facebook, Youtube, etc. But now there’s one that has solved that problem. There’s a new app called Timing that enables you to categorize your activities according to projects you create so you can see how productive you've been and exactly what you've been working on. It even includes a pretty impressive timeline feature that indicates exactly when you did what. There are some other cool bells and whistles that make it a time tracker worth checking out - including client billing, auto-categorization, and more. Find it in the resource links for this episode. Now you can get the bulletproof effect from your coffee creamer.   You’ve likely heard of Bulletproof Coffee - in fact, we’ve chatted with Dave Asprey, creator of Bulletproof coffee on The Leverage

  This episode of Optimize, Automate, Outsource features yet another list of links for you to consider to help you do more with the life you have. One of the most important aspects of that for any business owner is the task of process automation and optimization - and you know why, right? There are hundreds of things happening in the average business that are process-oriented and as we often say, many of those can be automated. We found a software service that enables process automation on a new scale, including connections with Zapier - which you know we love. Nick is quickly becoming addicted to this app so find out all about it on this episode.   Do you need an automated call center? Here’s one we’re loving.   We’ve tried plenty of call solutions in the past - including Ringcentral and Skype. For everything we tried, they were either too buggy and ineffective or had far too many features, which proved cumbersome for what we needed. But when we came upon a cool new app that integrates with Slack we found ex