The Scrappy AI Toolkit That Helps This ADHD Solopreneur Ditch ChatGPT

Dominic Carubba, an ADHD solopreneur, shares his journey of switching from OpenAI to Claude for its crisp, direct answers, and details his Mac setup including a MacBook Air, Mac Mini, and various applications. 

We discuss his experience juggling Mac and PC environments, the benefits of Setapp for Mac applications, and his use of tools like Descript for video editing and CleanMyMac for system maintenance. 

The conversation delves deep into his AI toolkit, covering specialized marketing AIs by Alex Hormozi and Frank Kern, Google Workspace Studio automations, and the concept of agentic AI with Claude Cowork for daily task management and data analysis.

Show notes & video version at: https://macpreneur.com/episode171

Connect with Dominic:

• https://theadhdleader.com
• https://salesandtechnology.com
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominiccarubba/

Highlights:

• [00:00] Introduction
• [01:33] Going All In On Apple
• [03:53] Must Have Mac Apps
• [04:21] Setapp Subscription Breakdown
• [07:40] Transcription With Whisper
• [11:52] CleanMyMac And AppSumo Warning
• [15:39] AI Tools For Marketing Copy
• [21:07] AI Workflows
• [25:16] Claude Projects And Cowork
• [33:43] Workspace Studio Email Summaries
• [38:48] Writing A Book With AI
• [42:44] Mac Aha Moment Tips
• [45:39] Applying to be a guest too

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Transcript

The Scrappy AI Toolkit That Helps This ADHD Solopreneur Ditch ChatGPT

Teaser (00:00)

Dominic Carubba

So I had a subscription for OpenAI for a long time, and I recently just switched that to Claude because Claude was giving me more crisp, direct answers and not a lot of blah, blah, blah that goes along with the answers that I have to remember to prompt. "Hey, cut out all the blah. Stop suggesting..." I got ADHD. You're making it worse, right?

Because it just says, "Look at all these... I a- answered your question. Don't even bother reading it. Look at all the things you can do." Then I go off on a tangent, so I'll let Claude chill out with me.

Welcome to Macpreneur (00:27)

Nova AI

Welcome to Macpreneur, the show for seasoned solopreneurs looking to streamline their business on a Mac.

Unlock the secrets to saving time and money with your host and technology mentor, Damien Schreurs.

Introducing Dominic Carubba (00:40)

Damien Schreurs

Hello, hello.

Today, I have the pleasure to introduce Dominic Carubba.

Dominic is a Marine Corps veteran, sales leader, and creator of Momentum, a system that helps entrepreneurs and professionals turn chaos into clarity and execution.

With more than 25 years in sales, leadership, and CRM consulting, he specializes in simplifying complex business systems so teams can perform without burnout.

After building, losing, and rebuilding businesses, Dominic now teaches leaders how to move from inconsistency to sustainable results by designing workflows that actually fit how they think and operate.

Dominic, welcome to the show.

Dominic Carubba

Hey. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate being here.

Dominic's Mac Setup: The Accidental Kool-Aid Drinker (01:31)

Damien Schreurs

Yeah. So thank you for being on the show. What is your current Mac setup?

Dominic Carubba

So I, (laughs) I drank the Kool-Aid. I'm good.

In 2014, I got a MacBook Air, and I got it on a project that I was working on, and the guy didn't pay me, so I kept it.

And I used it, and I... But I was always been a PC guy.

Then I got married. My wife had an Apple.

Then we went on our honeymoon.

I ended up getting an iPhone.

Now, I got the iPhone 14 Pro.

And then a couple years ago, it was like, I had the AirPods.

I had the iPod, but the circle looked... I may even have it hanging... I still have it.

I still have my iPod.

I don't use it... but I have it. I can't get the music anymore, like it's...

But I have it and, and then I have the Mac Mini.

And my next one is when the MacBook Air finally stops working, I'm gonna get a MacBook Pro, and then I'm just gonna be all Mac all the way.

I like it.

I- I hate that I like it, but it works so easily.

It's so...

Everything's so much easier.

Damien Schreurs

(laughs)

Dominic Carubba

So it's great.

Juggling Mac and PC Environments (02:44)

Damien Schreurs

And so you mentioned also during the pre-show that you're still a little bit you're losing...

Using a little bit Windows PC.

Yeah.

How do you deal with these two environments?

Dominic Carubba

It's all because of my shoulder.

So my shoulder, I think, got injured working at this desk.

I don't know if that's it.

I had lots of issues with my shoulder complex.

So I have a standup desk over there. That's where the MacBook Pro is gonna go, but I had a great little laptop, again, another project.

And I had to replace the hard drive and the memory, and it's still out of date.

It can't upgrade either.

So it- it's phasing out, but it's got a great screen, a touchscreen.

Closing out applications.

I'm moving now to... I used to move... It was hard to get to the left.

Now, it's hard to get to the right.

And boy, the problem is really just Chrome. Can we just all agree the problem is Chrome?

Damien Schreurs

(laughs)

Dominic Carubba

On all machines, the problem is Chrome.

Damien Schreurs

Too much memory.

Dominic Carubba

Why, Chrome? Why do you use so much memory?

It's supposed to be on the web, so it's easy and light.

And no.

Chrome says, "You know what? Nah, I'm gonna use it."

Mac Applications and the Setapp Discovery (03:53)

Damien Schreurs

Yeah. So apart from Chrome, which other applications do you use on your Mac?

So either the MacBook Air or the Mac Mini?

Dominic Carubba

Uh, so I use... I actually have downloaded the AI apps.

What's the one that... I have Descript on there.

iMazing is on there to get junk off my phone.

And I have a teleprompter app that I use.

I'm not using it now on this computer, but I have a teleprompter app that I use.

Damien Schreurs

Yeah, I- I have the Setapp subs- subscription.

So for $15 per month, I have access to more than 250 applications that I can download anytime and use as much as I want.

So it's, uh, they don't want people to say that it's the Netflix of o- of apps. (laughs) But when you think about it, it's almost that, huh?

It's... And, yeah, I discovered a new app called Notchie, and Notchie is actually a teleprompter that uses the notch of the MacBook as the place where the text flows.

And because it's next to the camera, ob- obviously, it's perfect, right? (laughs)

Dominic Carubba

So hold on now.

Wait.

What's the subscription.

That you have.

Where do you-

Damien Schreurs

So the subscription... service is called Setapp.

S-E-T-A-P-P. And you have different plans.

You can start as low as $10 per month, and that covers one Mac.

And you can install any of those 240 or 50 plus applications on your one Mac.

I have gone through full thing.

And so I can install it on up to four Macs, and I don't remember how many mobile devices, because some of the applications have both a desktop component and a mobile component.

Dominic Carubba

Sure.

Damien Schreurs

And funnily enough, it was because one of the apps that I was using switched to a subscription model that I was like, "Ugh. Do I want to pay the$ 5 per month or the $60 per year for this just, this one application?"

And then I noticed that this application was part of the $10 per month package.I realized, okay, that's a no-brainer.

I'm gonna... (laughs) I looked, there, there were so many other applications that I was... That I already had paid fixed licenses in the past, and I was stuck... with the older versions.

But when you are on something like Setapp, you get the new versions all the time, right?

When they release a new version... it's part of your subscription.

Dominic Carubba

Wow, you just created a a bright shiny object for me.

Damien Schreurs

(laughs)

And, yeah.

So for the listeners, (laughs) I have a, a special code, an affiliate, affiliate link.

It's, it's https://macpreneur.com/setapp.

And what it gives you and gives anyone is actually 30-day free trial compared to seven.

Dominic Carubba

Seven.

Damien Schreurs

Yes, if you go directly on the website... it would say seven-day free trial.

But if you use https://macpreneur.com/setapp, you get 30 days.

And by default, with that link, you will see there will be a Macpreneur code.

So you have a special affiliate relationship with Setapp.

And even if I didn't have (laughs) an affiliate ma- ev- so even if they didn't have an affiliate program, (laughs) I would still promote them because I wonder why I didn't use them earlier.

Dominic Carubba

There's another one.

There's one for... The same thing for AI.

So I pay 20 bucks a month for ChatGPT, and I... And my buddy just told me about one, I don't remember the name of it, so I gotta call him back, right?

But it's 20 bucks a month and you get access... to all of them.

Like, well, there you go, aggregation... already.

Damien Schreurs

And for instance, with Setapp, there is an application called Whisper Transcribe.

Again, it's part of the thing.

You give it an MP4, you give it an MP3, you give it whatever, a transcript from a... You, you give it some, some audio, right?

Recording from a meeting, and it will transcribe things.

And you can even pre-configure prompts so that when you give it some audio, it creates a summary, a Q&A, a post for LinkedIn, a post for Facebook, and you just upload the... You give the MP3.

At the same time, it's local, right?

It's local transcription.

It's called Whisper Transcribe.

Local transcriptions.

For the summary, I think it still goes to the cloud, so I think you still need...

I don't remember how I configured it for the post-processing afterwards. Of the transcript. Of the transcript, sorry.

The transcription is local on the Mac.

The transcript, when it is processed afterwards, I don't remember exactly how it works.

So yeah, you mentioned Descript.

What do you use Descript for?

Using Descript for Video and Audio (08:48)

Dominic Carubba

I found that, like,

I recorded a lot of training classes for Salesforce, so I'd put them up there and I just... I was able to chop them up pretty quickly, and that was useful.

I haven't done it for podcasting or anything yet.

I'm not doing podcasting yet.

I'm being a guest on podcasts, as you can tell, but I'm not doing my own podcast. Yeah, I put a light on now, so maybe I'm a little brighter.

And I use it to record meetings sometimes, when... I'm not doing it now, but I could.

I think for the price point, and I'm on a legacy price point, I've been on it for five years or so, four or five years, and I still don't really have the hang of editing with it, because I don't use it enough like that.

I had somebody else doing it for me, but I really do... Here's the other thing I really like.

Sometimes I can load a video and it'll do the transcription for me, as long as it's a video that's not been transcribed.

And that's pretty cool.

Anyway, so that, that was good.

I like...

But I really think their...

What really got me with Descript was the studio sound feature.

I was on it before they had studio sound, and then they came out with studio sound.

And boy, does it...

For a $35 a month program, it is a game- ... changer. Really does good.

But I'm inconsistent.

I go off and on all the time.

That's just me.

My ADHD does that.

Damien Schreurs

(laughs)

Yeah, what I especially like with Descript is that it handles any aspect ratio, right?

Not only vertical-

Dominic Carubba

Yeah.

Damien Schreurs

... but also square.

And also really any resolution.

So it could be a 4K square video and it, it works well.

Dominic Carubba

Sure.

Damien Schreurs

And the other thing that makes me... It's difficult for me to switch at the moment is I've invested a lot in their, their templating system.

So I have a bunch of pre-configured...

How do they call it?

Layouts or something like that.

So predefined-

Dominic Carubba

Sure.

Damien Schreurs

... aspect ratio, the Macpreneur logo, the positions of my camera, the guest camera.

And then, they use AI... to actually automatically edit and cut the video.

And it does that automatically.

The World of AI: Aggregators and Gurus (11:12)

Dominic Carubba

Damn. I'm not using it at all.

There's just so many pieces of software you can learn and be good at, and that's part of my business.

So it's tough.

Damien Schreurs

Yeah, so talking about AI.

So you mentioned the service.

It's a web service or is it a desktop application that gives you access to all those... different LLMs?

Dominic Carubba

The... I don't know.

I haven't... signed up for it yet.

I... My buddy told me about it, and they-

I forgot to get the link.

But I don't know.

And I have a couple of other AI tools we'll talk about... that I... I don't wanna prematurely bow out all the AI stuff, but that-

Damien Schreurs

Yeah, but... So you're using CleanMyMac. You, you, you mentioned that.

Dominic Carubba

Oh, yeah.

CleanMyMac is a gr- I think that's probably the best app I have on here. (laughs) I'm managing a smaller hard drive, and boy, that gets tough, 'cause I download, I forget to delete, it's got large files, I got videos that happen.

All that stuff happens and I'm like, "Oh."I need to now clean it up.

And it does help me clean it up.

Damien Schreurs

And, by the way, it's part of the SetApp subscription.

It's one of the...

It's one- ... one of the (...).

Dominic Carubba

I saw that just now.

I was like, "When is that renewing?"

Because...

Damien Schreurs

And it's actually the developer of CleanMyMac, MacPaw, who is behind SetApp, right?

It's the same developer from Ukraine.

And-

Dominic Carubba

Nice.

Damien Schreurs

Yeah, they, they were developing, they were selling CleanMyMac and then CleanMyMac X, but then they realized that they could also become distributors, right?

Dominic Carubba

Yeah, they know all the apps out there.

They've been keeping a track record of them. "Oh, these apps and these apps cause problems, these don't.

Let's get all the ones that probably, hopefully, that don't cause problems in a subscription so that our clean program looks really great because it's not, you're not bringing junk in."

Damien Schreurs

And yeah, and it's a little bit also like Amazon, huh?

You have these, you have reviews, right?

So you can see people using the apps, providing feedback... and providing reviews.

And what-

Dominic Carubba

I think it's a legit version of AppSumo.

Please stay away from AppSumo.

Let me give you a warning.

If you are susceptible to cool, shiny objects, do not... go to AppSumo.

You will load up on more stuff that you won't use, or at least, it'll... It's horrible.

Damien Schreurs

(laughs)

Yeah. If you pick, it's like picking the right horse, right?

If you pick the right horse, you may be lucky, but...

(laughs)

Dominic Carubba

You're gonna have a lot of donkeys that you're gonna go through.

Damien Schreurs

Exactly, exactly.

Dominic Carubba

Now, I just did sign up for the Adobe Suite because I'm an instructor at a university, and I saw like, I wanted something in Adobe, and then I said, "Let me see what this is."

And it's like half price.

So for the Adobe Suite, and I haven't tried Photoshop, I haven't...

I, I literally just tried Adobe Express, which is really Canva.

It's just ano- like, Canva, that, whatever the platform Canva is, I've seen it in 10 different labels now who...

Maybe it's Adobe Es- Express that's been this white label thing.

But I'm mad because I used to have Canva for $45 a year, and then I had to, I had some finance stuff, and I had to, I had to do something, and my ADD got caught, and it canceled.

When the annual renewal came up, the credit card I was using was whatever, and I wasn't paying attention.

So now I gotta pay 119 a year, a whole $10 a month for Canva.

But, but the Adobe Express, if I'm paying now as part of my subscription as an instructor at the university, then I'm gonna cancel my Canva with all my stuff in it.

But it'll stay there. The good news about Canva is you just have the free account.

But everything just works so much smoother.

I, look, I've been on my PC for three weeks now.

They can... Trying to take the sitting element, 'cause my desk, this is a newer chair that I've gotten and the desk height and all that, whatever it is, right?

My shoulder, so my shoulder got really bad.

So three weeks ago, I was just been standing up in that PC. It, the time, the half hour before this call started and now, I'm like, "I so miss my station, my Mac station."

I got, 'cause I got better monitors.

I got four monitors sitting on it.

You know what I mean?

I got like, my little, everything.

Thanks.

My shoulder starts hurting... and now it's your fault, but that's okay.

Damien Schreurs

(laughs)

Dominic's AI Toolkit (15:39)

Damien Schreurs

But let's go to the AI segment then.

So what, which AI tools or, yeah, systems are you using right now?

Dominic Carubba

So I, I had a subscription for o- OpenAI for a long time.

Um, and I recently just switched that to Claude, because I did that because Claude was giving me more crisp, direct answers and not a lot of blah, blah, blah that goes along with the answers that I have to remember to prompt. "Hey, cut out all the blah.

Stop suggesting."

I got ADHD.

You're making it worse, right?

'Cause it just says, "Look at all these. I answered your question. Don't even bother reading it. Look at all these things you can do."

Then I go off on a tangent.

So I'm like, "Claude, chill out with me," but I'm gonna go check out the other one and see if I can build it up.

But I have two other AIs that I use that are specifically related to s- marketing.

And they are by two different gurus.

One's 49 bucks a month.

One, one is, I think, 500 a month, but I paid that up front.

And I don't, I now, I'm grandfathered in, so I don't pay anything monthly.

I'm just paying off what I paid for it before to get to it.

And that's Alex Hormozi's one.

And if, by the way, if you or anybody else wants a free copy of his book, Money Models, um, I'm happy to provide that link.

You just pay the shipping and handling, you get the $30 book for free.

But that's his $100 million Money Model.

When he did his book launch, I bought the 200 books, and I've only gotten, given away one.

I figure, might as well give away the book and make people happy about it.

But, so yeah.

Those are the two AIs I use.

And they've come a long way in a very short time as well.

So they review, create, review my marketing landing pages, my email campaigns, those kind of things that I would do very poorly if I did it on my own.

Just not good at all it.

Damien Schreurs

And I guess Alex Hormozi's one is based on his principles... and teachings and so on.

Dominic Carubba

Stop.

Yes.

Yeah. And the other one is from a guy named Frank Kern.

And Frank Kern is a very expensive copyright who created this AI initially, and I was on the very first version of it when it first came out.

Created this version to write like Frank, right?

Now, here's a guy that I know 20 years ago was cutting checks for a quarter million dollars a month to Frank Kern because of the emails that he was writing.So Frank Kern is a good email writer.

And so that, I use both of those.

They help me.

And they've come a long way as well.

They kinda help me out.

And they work really good on my Mac.

So they're both browser-based, but they also now have a-... downloadable version.

Damien Schreurs

Ah, okay.

And for Claude, did you install the desktop application on your Mac?

Dominic Carubba

I did install the desktop application on my Mac.

And I have not done much with that.

And one of my buddies who encouraged me to get more connected to Mac, he, he recommends it on the Mac itself, just to run local stuff.

It just...

I guess it's better.

I'm not... I don't know for sure, but it...

But so far, I mean, it, it does just fine.

It's doing just fine.

But I do prefer to do it on the Mac.

I like everything.

Damien Schreurs

Yeah, I, I have a full plan now-

Dominic Carubba

Tell me what I don't like.

Damien Schreurs

... for Claude. For very long time-

Dominic Carubba

Yeah.

Damien Schreurs

... I resisted. (laughs) And then there was the-

... Department of Defense and Department of War saga.

Dominic Carubba

Yeah.

I heard a little bit about that, but okay, I'll go with that.

Damien Schreurs

And for me, the stake that they put in the ground and they said, "These are our principles, and we won't budge even if you are the US government,"

for me it was, was a strong signal.

And then, (laughs) and then OpenAI or Sam Altman, Sam Altman afterwards saying, "Okay, we, we took the deal."

(laughs)

Dominic Carubba

I, because it was air, I'm gonna put the one my friend told me about.

So I did a search for all-in-one AI. A bunch came up, but this is the one my buddy Dan Jordan told me about, Magai.

And so that's it.

I don't... I'm not endorsing nor supporting any of them.

Do what you want.

Give it a shot.

If there's something better, let me know, but come on, man.

They're gonna...

You know. I was using this, I was using this one, P-R-A-P- AI PRN or something like that, and I had the subscription and then I dropped it, and it had a bunch of prompts that were, or s- they weren't GPTs yet.

They were structured prompts that I think acted like a GPT.

So much has happened in the AI evolution in the last... Since I, I used ChatGPT when it was six days old.

That was early, early in.

I didn't use it much, but I wrote a really crappy book on it that I've yet to go back and run through the other AI tools, the upgrade, to see, "Hey, can you fix this?"

The User Experience Challenge in AI (21:14)

Dominic Carubba

But I think the thing with AI tools... Like, I've created a little strategy with AI tools, right, to take the output and throw it in a Google Doc, 'cause Google Doc has tabs, right?

So I could keep tabs of all the things, 'cause it goes off on tangents and I wanna be able to get back to, "What about this?"

And then talk and then go back and then update that tab and those kind of things, right?

And then I can download the whole thing in a markdown language from Google and load it into chat.

It can read the whole document, and now I can start asking it. It's an educated thing.

But it is still... I think the problem with AI right now is,

it's still scroll-based,

right?

So you start getting into a chat conversation, and it puts out all this output and then you gotta scroll up and down, and we learned a long time ago,

books are better than scrolls.

So I can't wait to see that evolution, who makes

chat contained a little bit, right, and work. When you're in a generative AI space, how do you add that level of control and reference?

Because it does... They did have it in there for a little while, right, where you could edit the canvas or you could talk about it, whatever, which is great if it...

But then that went away, I think.

Then they created projects and now they've got something else and, like, all right, great.

Everybody's changing faster than I can get used to it.

And I'm a pretty fast adapter to technology, 'cause that's what I do for a li- I've done for a living for a long time.

I catch on.

I also blow off learning sometimes because I'm like, I'm not... Why bother learning? I'm not using it.

Don't learn anything you're not absolutely using right now.

There's no reason.

Learn from where you're at.

Damien Schreurs

Yeah. I, I agree with you-... the scrolling thing.

I don't know for ChatGPT, because I haven't opened the app for a week. (laughs) Which is telling, when I've been in Claude and Gemini all the time.

But Gemini, yes, I almost...

So when I use Gemini, I have a workspace for business accounts, so I have a pro subscription for that.

It's either I'm doing deep research in Gemini, and I think deep research in Gemini is much better than ChatGPT's deep research, uh, agent.

But also now I'm using Canvas all the time in Ch- in Gemini, eh?

It's, uh, ca-

Not Canva.

Can- the Canvas capability.

Not Canva, the software.

Yeah, Canvas.

Dominic Carubba

Huh?

Oh, got it. Canvas.

Damien Schreurs

Canvas. Because-

Yeah, as you say, I'm working on an email.

I'm working on a landing page.

I'm working on a, a newsletter article.

I don't want to scroll up and down to read what was the previous version, and now it changes only one, one, one paragraph.

No, I want to see the whole thing.

And you chat on the left, the document on the right gets edited and automatically changes.

Dominic Carubba

Now, what, in what aspect of Gemini is that?

Just, like, in a Google Doc? Or-

Damien Schreurs

The problem with-

So no, i- but, but it's a one-click-... Google Doc, huh?

Dominic Carubba

Yeah, right.

I know.

Damien Schreurs

You... But you ca- you could be, I could be working on a research, and I could turn that into an infographic, or I could turn that into a mini website.... and it will write the code, and then display the webpage, and it's a, usually it's a interactive website, or mini-website with three pages,

with-

... and it has created the buttons, it has created the graphics, the infographics.

And, yeah, so for me,

Canvas, the Canvas capability in Gemini, really good.

If you want something that is more constrained or... then you should look at NotebookLM, also from Google.

And, yeah, that's-

Dominic Carubba

I love NotebookLM. I used it the first-... week it came out too.

And the thing about it, what I loved the most, was when it did the podcast interview with me.

The Next Evolution: Agentic AI with Claude Cowork (25:16)

Damien Schreurs

I think we are experiencing the next evolution of AI and large language models.

And I think Claude is at the forefront of that.

And it's with Claude, with Cowork you... which is actually a lighter version of Claude code for developers.

Dominic Carubba

Yeah, I just saw the Cowork-... I didn't really understand it, yet.

Damien Schreurs

But Cowork-

Cowork, Cowork is actually... it's more an agent than an assistant.

It actually developed as an agent platform.

So you've heard about OpenClaude?

Dominic Carubba

Yeah.

Damien Schreurs

Cowork is a little bit like OpenClaude but in a, in a tighter environment, in a more secure environment, and, uh, let's say it's OpenClaude with a leash.

(laughs)

Dominic Carubba

(laughs) Nice, yeah.

Damien Schreurs

And

the normal chat of Claude, it's every time you start a new conversation, we... in Claude you can create projects which are like GPTs, so you-... could still have a kind of an assistant thing.

So I've created my Co-CEO now as a project, I have my curriculum assistant, my curriculum developer as a project.

So I have a bunch of projects that I go to when I need to do a specific task, or when I ha- when I need to brainstorm and have a spec- a specific persona that I talk to, right?

That's what projects are about.

But Cowork-... is when I want to work inside a folder on my computer, or when I want to connect to applications on my Mac.

And that's really the unlock of Cowork, is through something called MCP, Model, Model-Context Protocol.

Dominic Carubba

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah.

Damien Schreurs

And not later than today, I've developed two MCP servers to talk to Podio, which is my CRM, and lives in the cloud, and the other one to talk to Timing, which is my (clears throat) a time tra- a time tracker, part of Setapp, that monitors everything that I do on my Mac in the sense that it records which applications, and maybe the name of the windows for the applications.

And I wanted a way to analyze how I spend my time.

So, yes, typically I will time track.

I have Toggl and Timery to do that.

But when I'm in, uh-

... I use, uh-

... a combination of two. I use Toggl because it's free and it's the backend database, right?

Toggl, T-O-G-G-L.

Dominic Carubba

Which one do you use?

Which one do you use-... to manage that?

Yeah, I know Toggl.

Damien Schreurs

And I am still on the free plan.

But Toggl doesn't have much integration on the Mac, and especially for automation.

And so I'm using Timery, which is a paid app, but I think I pay $20 per year or something like that.

R-

But it's not part of Setapp.

Dominic Carubba

It's Setapp.

It's part of Setapp, but it's not-

Damien Schreurs

No Timery.

And so I'm using both,

and I would say 80% of the time, I'm quite good at initiating a time tracking exercise, starting a timer, stopping a timer, and so on.

But then there are days like today and yesterday, where I'm heavy into discovering new features with Claude and MCPs and stuff like that, and I'm in like developing mode, code, coding mode.

And, but I still have a job. (laughs) I still have my job, so there's still...

I need to switch between this and that, and then I don't take the time to time track.

But now with the MCP server that, by the way, Gemini started and then Claude refined afterwards, and actually fixed bugs and security issues that, that Gemini had introduced. (laughs) Now, just before our call, I was in Claude and I said, "Can you look at my day and split it in 15 minutes increment?

And if the same applications that you use multiple more than... so multiple slots, aggregate the thing.

And tell me when I had lunch." (laughs) That was the challenge, "Can you detect when I had lunch?

Today?" (laughs)

Dominic Carubba

Nice.

Damien Schreurs

Yes. Yes.

Dominic Carubba

Could it tell? Could it tell?

Damien Schreurs

Oh, no. Oh, there is a change in pattern in the, (laughs) way, the apps that you used. And I said-

Dominic Carubba

Wow.

Damien Schreurs

"Yes, you must have lunch between 1:30 and 2:30."

I said, "Yes, I, that's what I did." (laughs) And, but the, the ability now-... to be in a different kind of Claude window, where you talk to your data.

You don't talk to Claude about stuff.

You ask Claude to do actions on your behalf.

Automating the Day with Claude, Note Plan, and Google Workspace (30:29)

Damien Schreurs

(clears throat)

And the unlock for me was the ability to link Claude to another application, again, it's part of setup called Note Plan that I've been using now for months, and that helped me actually plan my day, plan my weeks, and so on.

But now because I found an MCP server already done for me that I just tweaked a little bit with Claude, but now I can go and clone and I could say...

And I, I've developed a morning setup.

And the morning setup, I tell Claude, "Please go and do my morning setup."

And what it does is it's looking at my calendar, because Note Plan is linked to my calendar, so it sees how much free time I have in, during the day, and it looks at my appointments.

Then it looks at my, the weekly goals that I set myself and the weekly tasks.

Then it creates a new daily note, and every day I have a different th- theme, so different kinds of goal that I have for the day.

Then-

... uh, I have another automation with Google Workspace Studio that looks at my inbox the last day and fetches all the unread emails.

So Claude now goes to Google Drive, open that Google Doc that contains that summary, and knows if I have urgent things from clients without me opening the inbox at all,

and then it combines everything, (laughs) gives me a small digest for the day.

It suggests three tasks that I should prioritize for the day,

and it is done automatically. (laughs)

Dominic Carubba

Just why aren't you showing me how to set that up?

(laughs)

That's awesome.

That's great.

I love it.

Because I tried some of Google's-... automations.

Boy, that was a train wreck, because I just did it, I saw it, I did my ADD thing, I saw it, I clicked on it, and I activated a few things.

And I immediately got back couple days later, I'm like, "All of these draft emails that it wrote for me were horrible."

Now, I had jiva.ai, and all their draft emails were great.

Like, most of the time, I was like, "Send it." Like, I got a GED, good enough, dude. Boom.

Go.

Send them up.

Sic 'em. It's gonna, it's more, it's not me, it's not my, it's not my voice.

It's not my time either, bam.

I think it was, I didn't take the time to like really make sure it was going to be the right thing, and then I had to t- then it took forever, like, then it wasn't easy to find it to go turn it off.

It's the same thing that happens when I teach software applications-... for all these years, right?

Somebody inevitably goes in, changes something, doesn't know what they did or how they did it, and then now things work differently and they don't like it and they don't know how to get back to it.

That happens all the time.

And it still happens to me occasionally, but anyway.

But I like that idea.

So it, let me see if I got it great.

You got a, it's a Gemini tool that reads your inbox?

Or is it-

I have Google-

Workspace too, right?

Damien Schreurs

Yes, it's always-

It's-

... because it's a, it-

It's a, yeah.

And if you, so if you have a Google Workspace for Business account, then you have access to-... Workspace Studio, right?

So it's studio.workspace.google.com, and this is where you can set up automations.

And I had set up, I have three automations that I've set up.

Dominic Carubba

Yep, I do.

Oh, yeah.

This is the one, this is the one I-... screwed up myself.

Damien Schreurs

But, but-

Yeah.

Dominic Carubba

I have it, I have it now adding all attachments to the Google Drive, and I was-... actually on my walk this morning.

Here's what's frustrating about that.

Hey, man.

You gotta do a better job of getting rid of some of this junk.

Like, it's now too much ju- like, too many thumbnails and blah, blah, blah, though.

Anyway.

Damien Schreurs

Yes.

Yeah. It's-

So th- th- mine is, uh, every day at 7:00 AM,

look at my inbox, but only the unread emails from the past, I think it was the past 24 hours, or now I switched to the past seven days,

something like that.

And then d- what it finds out and what it summarizes, it puts it into a Google Doc.

The same Google Doc, the same tab, and I do the cleanup.

And also, I sent myself, in Google Chat, a message to tell me that it has been done.

And I had one that, uh, when I ask it to summarize the news, the AI news from the past 24 hours, that one didn't work.

It didn't work because when I was looking at the news and I was clicking on the link, it was like October 2025.

I said, "The last 24 hours, please."

(laughs) And it was not able to follow the prompt, so Gemini was not able to follow the prompt that I had set for my news gathering.

And since then, I've changed.

I have another system, and I'm using Claude but via the API now.

I'm using Claude Haiku via the API.

It runs every day on my Mac, twice a day actually, and it's actually my Mac that, in the background, fetches articles from websites, uh, or blogs that I told it to fetch,

and it prepares a very nice summary.

And again, it updates a Google Doc, a new tab.

Every day, I have a new tab, and in that tab, I have my morning digest, and, and then at, uh, 7:30 PM, I have my evening digest.

So every day, 7:30 AM, 7:30 PM, and I can go in that Google Doc,

and then I can go back to any previous days and find back the news, and it's pretty good at following my prompt.And I'm still in testing mode in the sense that I keep all the articles that it saw before summarizing and curating.

But it's very good.

Dominic Carubba

Nice.

Damien Schreurs

And so Claude Cowork,

you can also create, like, task that run at a set time.

So you can say to Claude Cowork, "Every day at 8:00 AM, do these seven things." And the seven things could be purely local, but they could be also linked to the, uh, this MCP server.

So if you hook it to Google, you can hook Claude to Google Drive.

So that was the trick for me.

When I discovered that Anthropic actually offers a Google Drive connector,

now I could...

So I se- I, in my, in the morning setup SOP, one of the steps is use the Google Drive connector, open that Google Doc that was pre-populated by Workspace Studio, and look at what are the unread emails from Damien, from th- the inbox, for the past 24 hours.

But the prompt to Claude is, "Only take into account what is really urgent," right?

So I gave it a prompt-... so that it doesn't tell me about newsletters or stuff like that.

Leveraging AI for Content Creation: The AI-Written Book (38:02)

Dominic Carubba

Yeah. Clearing out the crap is the, the... Now, all the crap that AI's creating, we need AI to help us clear it out, so we can just hit the time that, what is it?

And what I really hate are really well-written AI articles. "Oh, I gotta read this thing?

But I really like reading it and I'm getting value out of it, but then I'm gonna..."

So you know.

What a frustration.

AI and ADHD.

Actually, I just got the URL.

AIhdleader.com.

So I'm using a lot of AI and I'm not capitalizing on it.

Like, I'm not telling people about it.

Like, I wrote a book with AI.

Uh, so fricking AppSumo, right?

They had a Book AI.

I saw the email.

I shouldn't have seen it, but I did.

I was like, "What's the deal?"

So I'm a pro member, so I get a 10% discount, which is worse.

But one book a month, this AI will write the book.

And I said, "Let's try it."

I took an article that Claude wrote that was really good, 1800 words on ADHD productivity for the ADHD leader kind of thing.

I plucked that in, said, "Use this as your framework."

Re- blah, blah, blah.

Bam, it wrote the freaking book.

Now, it took each section of the book, ran it through Claude, 'cause I think Claude's got a better copywriter in it.

It tweaked some things and then it plugged it back in.

Then it did the book.

Then a buddy of mine told me, "You need a program, DAI it."

But here's my strategy.

I, I don't need the program, but it does all the kind of things with the book publishing wise.

But here's my strategy for DAI-ing it, right?

I never followed a script in my life.

As an actor, as a performer, as a trainer, anybody gives me a script, good luck getting me to keep it, right?

The only time I do it is on voiceover work when I'm actually reading the script, sometimes.

Sometimes I stick with it.

But I'm just gonna do LinkedIn Lives.

20, I got 24 sections of this book that I've gotta read, right?

Or I haven't read it yet.

And, uh, I said, "Hey man, am I really like...

Is this sloppy?"

He said, "No, you're leveraging AI as any ADHD leader should."

Right?

Why do we have AI if you can't create content?

And it's, and I've scanned it, it's pretty good.

But now I'm gonna read it.

That'll... And add my own stories, 'cause it threw in generic stories for me, 'cause I wanted to get it done.

See how fast I can get it done.

And here's the thing.

I would've got it all done in less than two and a half hours

had I had the paid Claude subscription.

And I said, "Oh, you stopped on section four, chapter four?

I'll just come back for the next four chapters."

So then I went back the next day when it was free, and then by the time I was done with it free, I'd paid for the Claude subscription.

That's how I switched over.

Because when I read it through ChatGPT, it wasn't good.

So I think AI is a lot like cell phone subscription.

Who's better, this one or that one?

I'm like, "Where are you standing?"

E- every cell phone carrier sucks-... somewhere.

And every one of them has great signal somewhere else.

Who's got the best signal?

Where are you standing at the moment?

And I think that's, that, that's why I gave up on playing with... Every month, when I started, because my buddy who built an MCP, who talks to the CRM, who basically tells his CRM, "Now go, I need a week's worth of LinkedIn posts."

And it goes...

And it puts them in the CRM, in the CRM that I use publishes it, and it runs it out.

And so he's got some manual control in it just because he thinks that's important, 'cause he's an AI engineer.

But I'm like, but he uses a local database to store all the stuff, but he literally goes out to LinkedIn, uses his contacts, like find stuff that's germane to the database, which is really where AI does its magic.

And as a Salesforce guy, that's where Einstein Analytics in 2019 were leading edge, because it's analytics on your data, which is the best story you can tell.

Once you get outside the gen- into the generative AI world and you start adding in all the variables, it's not as good.

And then AI though is, I think things people don't even realize exist yet, or realize how powerful agentic stuff is.

Where it's following the rails, it's doing the job and it's n- and it's highly focused, and it's just...... sharp.

Pomeli has been really great for me too.

I, I, I've created a lot of stuff but I've yet to use it, but I've created a bunch of stuff with it.

Think it's fun.

Aha Moment: The Mac User Experience (42:44)

Damien Schreurs

Okay. Almost at the end of the show, let's go, let-

... the aha moment, the tip or trick.

Dominic Carubba

I do-

Like, for me, the aha moment was with my Mac.

I think the biggest thing I'm really,

that I like about it is things, they literally make just better sense on a Mac.

Like, they just present themselves better.

And I don't know, it's a touch, it's a user experience, and it's like me trying to describe how a banana tastes or how, what it feels like to ride a bike.

I don't know, it just feels like, it feels like it's good.

And the only thing my Mac mini doesn't have that I think I want to get is that little touch pad thing, right?

So you can actually do the Magic Mouse thing like this.

I've got a Magic Mouse, and that's okay.

It gets a little dirty and it gets a little chunky sometimes, I don't know why.

And, but the, when I got the hang of the Mission Control, that was awesome.

I haven't gotten the hang of a lot with my Mac yet.

There's still so much I don't

know about it that I know I don't know, and everything still works great.

Like, I don't feel the need to have to stop and learn something, I just have to stop, I just do whatever I'm doing, and it works fantastic.

Where to Find Dominic Online (44:04)

Damien Schreurs

Okay. Well, good.

Thank you for being on the show.

Where can people find you online, Dominique?

Dominic Carubba

So depending on what you want, if you want to get a handle on your technology, specifically as it relates to sales and your CRM,

salesandtechnology.com is where I go.

And what I'm really doing, 'cause I'm figuring this out, I've made a shift, I did training in corporate America for many years, and now, but I'm not very good at client service work.

Like, I'm just not a good client service guy.

But I know some of you out there are and you need to learn the technical skills.

I'll train you to learn the technical skills.

But that's what I train lead and coach people to use, generate more revenue.

And I got all kind of tools and tricks.

I love that stuff.

And then, I'm also working with leaders individually, 'cause I do have a passion for the leaders, in a program I call Momentum and it's under theadhdleader.com is where you can look at that, or salesandtechnology.com.

And here's what I tell,

my calendar is there on Sales and Technology, all spelled out, just like it's supposed to be.

And book a talk, if you want to talk to me for anything, I'm happy to talk.

If it's about making more sales, more revenue, if you're a dude and you're frustrated with your wife, call me first.

I'm happy to talk about that too.

I've been in a men's group working with a lot of dudes who do dumb stuff, and I've done most of the dumb stuff myself.

So I talk from experience, not from theory.

Anyway, that's it.

Damien Schreurs

Thank you very mu- much, Dominique. (laughs)

Dominic Carubba

Thank you.

I really appreciate it.

How to Be a Guest on Macpreneur (45:39)

Damien Schreurs

And so if you would like to share how you are using your Mac to run your solo business, it's simple.

Just visit macpreneur.com/apply.

If you are already on PodMatch, just click on the button and you will land on the show profile.

Otherwise, fill the application form and I will get back to you within a few days.

Once again, it's macpreneur.com/apply.

Until next time, I'm Damien Schreurs wishing you a productive day.

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