What is Mind Mapping?

In the early days of shareware, I used an extremely cool tool called PC-Outline. The tool let me quickly capture ideas into an outline, then use keyboard shortcuts to move the ideas around and organize each idea under the proper category. I loved the tool for the time, but now we live in the future. So now, in our more graphic future I use visual outlining tools called mind maps.

Mind mapping is a brilliant visual way to brainstorm any topic. You start off with a central topic in the middle, and then add “branches” and “sub-branches” for additional related ideas, topics and subtopics. You can use the mind map program to quickly capture ideas, then drag and drop them to reorganize them. Mind mapping is great for brainstorming, planning, presenting, training and collaboration. You can see my other mind mapping videos here.

Why Amy Mind?

I have used many mind mapping programs over the years, but now that we live in the future, I find I am using AI more and more in my workflows. However, my current tool didn’t have any AI capability. So I started searching and I tried several. I eventually settled on Amy Mind because it had a very clean interface and, while it had great AI features, I could also use it like my regular mind map programs by just adding the content manually.

Using AI in AmyMind

So how does the AI work in AmyMind? The AI helps you in multiple ways.

1. Mind Map Creation: Use the AI function to create your mind map for you based on a topic you choose. You get a beautiful mind map in seconds that you can build on instead of having to come up with each idea yourself.
2. Chat with AI: You can chat further with the AI to expand on points.
3. AI Ideas: The AI even gives you ideas to “spark” your brainstorming

Here is an example of what AmyMind created when I asked it to create a mind map I could use to help me teach people how to use AmyMind.

AmyMind Templates

While the AI is great at creating new mind maps for you, you can also access a number of mind map templates at the AmyMind website for inspiration, including business planning, SWOT, project management, study notes, etc. But honestly, I think you would have more fun and get better results asking AI to build your mind map for you.

Sharing and Exporting in AmyMind

You can quickly share any mind map in AmyMind by clicking on [Share] and then sending the link to the recipient. The recipient will be able to see the mind map without having to create their own AmyMind account.

For  exporting, you can export to the following file formats:

• Image (.png)
• Markdown (.md)
• FreeMind (.mm)
• XMind (.xmind)
• PDF (.pdf)
• Word (.docx)
• PowerPoint (.pptx)
• Local file (.amymind)

So you have many ways to share your mind map.

Organizing Your Mind Maps

As your collection of mind maps grow, it can get difficult to find the mind map you want. AmyMind does allow you to have folders and I highly recommend you start by creating folders right in the beginning to organize your mind maps, so you don’t have to go back and do this later like I did!

Additional Tools:

AmyMind has some additional tools to help you bring your existing content into a mind map, including:

• Text to Mind Map
• Markdown to Mind Map
• PDF to Mind Map
• Word to Mind Map
• YouTube to Mind Map

While I haven’t gotten to try them all yet, I think the YouTube to Mind Map tool sounds particularly useful for creating learning guides from training videos.

Keyboard Shortcuts

I am a real fan of keyboard shortcuts (see my Windows keyboard shortcuts article) so I was pleased to see that AmyMind provides keyboard shortcuts for many of its functions. Just hold your mouse over the bottom left ? for the help section to see the shortcuts.

Documentation & Help

AmyMind has a user guide and FAQs on their website and has responded to my emails at AmyMind. I have also had a Zoom call with the founder and found him very approachable. However, they are a small team so it can take a while to get help.

AmyMind Use Cases

In general, I use AmyMind for:

• brainstorming
• planning
• coaching
• and training

Here are some more specific cases:

• Writing & Publishing; I am currently writing a contemporary fantasy series. I use AmyMind to plan out and outline the elements of each of the 3 books in the planned trilogy. I can quickly capture any new ideas and then drag and drop them to the correct book and organize them by the order that they will appear in the book. When an idea for a new book or series pops into my head, I add it to a separate mind map with all my story and book ideas. I also have a mind map created for my publishing and marketing plan for the series. You can sign up for notices of my upcoming fantasy and science fiction books here.
• Mastermind Sessions: I run a productivity coaching mastermind group called The Time Guild which has weekly mastermind sessions for our members. During the mastermind session, I take notes on what we talk about in AmyMind. After the session, I share the mind map with all the participants as well as the recording of the session.
• Coaching: Similar to the mastermind sessions, I use mind maps to take notes during one-to-one coaching sessions.
• Strategic Planning: Mind maps are great for planning out my next year, or even my next 5 years.
• Group Brainstorming: While I often use Gamma presentations (PowerPoint alternative) for training, for brainstorming, mind maps are king. You can quickly capture notes without thinking, then organize them afterwards just by dragging and dropping the points into the proper topic or subtopic. AmyMind makes it easy to share your mind map after the session.

AmyMind Pricing

AmyMind is very affordable. Their free version is generous with up to 20 mind maps and 5 AI-actions per day. Their AmyMind Pro version is only $45 per year with unlimited mind maps and 500 AI-actions per day.

Opportunities for Improvement

Of course, no software is perfect. Here are a few opportunities for improvement we see for AmyMind:

1. Improve Collaboration: While AmyMind lets you share mind maps, it isn’t really set up to let multiple people collaborate on a mind map which some other tools do offer.
2. Create a Community: Whenever I start working with a new tool, one of the first things I do is join a community for the tool if they have one. I find these communities are great places to learn about the software, see creative use cases and get peer support and learn from other users. These communities are sometimes on Reddit, Facebook, or as a forum attached to their main site. AmyMind is new, so I don’t see such a community yet,
3. Organization: AmyMind has folders which is great, but I would find it useful if they also had subfolders for additional organization, especially for those of us who create mind maps for clients. This way I could have a folder for the client, then subfolders for Planning, Marketing, Training, HR, etc.
4. Support: AmyMind has a small team so it can take a while to get help.

AmyMind Review Conclusion

In spite of the drawbacks, AmyMind is a joy to use. The AI component works well, generating entire mind maps in seconds. And AmyMind’s mind mapping capabilities match those of the much more expensive mind mapping programs I currently pay a lot for.

In conclusion, I highly recommend trying AmyMind and supporting a small up-and-coming software company that has made a great product! At the time of writing this article, AmyMind is my primary mind mapping tool. Want to see AmyMind and mind mapping in action? Book a discovery call with me. 

Hi everyone! 👋

I hope you’re all having a fantastic, productive week! As your “Captain Time,” I’m on a mission to help you save time and boost your networking powers. 🦸‍♂️

I have some exciting training sessions lined up for May and June! Whether you want to master the art of networking or build your own AI-powered tools, there’s something here for everyone.

Here is what’s coming up on the radar:

🌐 Online Webinars (Join from anywhere!)

• May 12: The Connection Code
  Learn the secrets to supercharging your networking and professional relationships.
  👉 Register here for May 12
• Jun 11: Use Claude to Create Your Own Suite of Productivity Apps
  Stop waiting for the perfect app—build your own custom productivity suite with AI!
  👉 Register here for June 11

📍 Edmonton Workshops (Let’s meet in person!)

• June 16: The AI Productivity Playbook
  A deep dive into real-world AI strategies to give you back hours of your day.
  👉 Register for the Edmonton Workshop

Seats always fill up fast, so grab your spot and let’s make these next few months your most productive yet! 🛡️⏱️

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Warmly,

Garland Coulson, “Captain Time”

Proven AI Use Cases You Can Apply Immediately

📅When: Tues, Jan 16 from 2 PM to 4 PM

📍Where: ATB Entrepreneurs Centre, 4234 Calgary Tr NW, Edmonton

🧑🏻‍🏫Instructor: Garland Coulson, “Captain Time”

Stop drowning in digital noise and let Captain Time show you how to turn AI into your ultimate sidekick! 🦸‍♂️ This fast-paced Edmonton AI workshop delivers proven AI use cases for email mastery, supercharged learning, and automated social media content creation. We’ll skip the fluff and dive into building custom “Mini-Apps” for streamlined decision-making, high-value lead magnets, and tools you can share directly with your clients. ⚙️

You’ll walk away with actionable steps to sharpen your daily planning, tackle task management, and organize your entire knowledge base using PKMS tools like NotebookLM. ⏱️ Whether you’re looking to reclaim your afternoon or scale your professional output, this session gives you the immediate, practical playbook you need to thrive. 🚀✨ Seating is limited—let’s get your productivity soaring!

Seating is limited. Save your seat now:

Not in Edmonton, but still need AI productivity training? Contact me about providing this workshop to your or your team in your own city or via webinar.

What is NotebookLM?

NotebookLM is an AI tool from Google that lets you create notebooks and then research your project, refine using chat, and choose from a range of outputs. For this example, I am showing my Publishing Notebook in NotebookLM. I created my Publishing notebook to research self-publishing for my upcoming fantasy and science fiction novels I am writing. You can join my author list here to get notices when the books are ready.

When you first log into NotebookLM, you will see a list of your notebooks and an option to create a notebook, Click on [Create New] to create your first notebook.

After you have created a notebook, you will see a screen that consists of three panels: Sources, Chats, and Studio.

Sources:

The Sources panel lets you add sources by searching the web (Fast or Deep Research), uploading files, adding from Google Drive, and copying and pasting text. You can then click on each source for an AI summary and remove it if it doesn’t fit your project. This lets you pick and choose from the best sources on the web, plus any of your own sources, such as your own books, reports, SOPs, and research you have already done. For example, in my publishing notebook, I also included subreddits related to authors and publishing. I can even upload my own book manuscript to help determine the best target audiences and marketing channels for it.

Chat:

The Chat area is very similar to what we are already used to with other AI tools. I use the chat panel to ask my questions and make connections between with my data sources and accomplish the tasks I want to achieve.

Studio:

The Studio panel in NotebookLM is brilliant. This lets you take the sources and your chat conversations and turn them into something that can actually be used! Here are the options.

1. Audio Overview: This function’s name is really understated. You can choose an audio overview as a:
   • Brief – a short audio overview of the core ideas
   • Deep Dive – NotebookLM creates a conversation between two podcast hosts, talking about the topic
   • Critique – an expert review of your sources
   • Debate – a debate between two hosts
   • Options: You can also choose if you want a short or long audio overview, the language and you can specify what the AI hosts should focus on. I was blown away by the audio options created here
2. Slide Deck: This option will let you create a slide deck. You have options of a detailed deck or presenter slides (clean and minimal to be presented by a speaker) and again you can choose language and give slide deck instructions. You can run the slide deck right from within NotebookLM to present it, or share the notebook and slides with others and also export as .pdf or PowerPoint (.pptx). I use this feature to create slide decks when I present.
3. Video Overview: As someone who regularly creates video content, the Video Overview blew me away! The video overview lets you create a short Brief for you to quickly learn core ideas, or you can create a structured Explainer video. You can also choose from a range of different visual styles and specify what the AI should focus on. The result? A beautiful explainer video with an excellent AI voiceover.
4. Mind Map: As someone who loves mind maps for brainstorming and training, I was pleased to see that the Studio output options included the ability to output the knowledge content as a mind map. The mind map is animated, moving as you open or close each branch. The mind map can be downloaded as an image (.png) file for sharing.
5. Reports: Report options include creating a briefing document, a study guide, a blog post or a custom report where you specify the structure and style. They also have a few format templates for you to choose from. The reports are in a mainly text version that can also include tables. You can copy and paste the text with formatting into other word processing options to expand and edit the report.

NotebookLM Advantages Over Other AI Tools

Ok, you are probably already using other AI tools. Me too. I regularly use Gemini, Claude, Perplexity and Gamma. So why would I also add NotebookLM to my AI toolkit? Because NotebookLM does some things that other AI tools don’t do or don’t do as easily or as well.

Source Control: I like that NotebookLM lets me control what sources it uses and I can tick or untick sources quickly to change the inputs. Yes, this can also be done with careful prompting, but NotebookLM has source control built into it’s interface so it is easier to use.

Reduced AI Hallucinations: Like us, AI has been known to have flights of fancy and just make up information, as some lawyers have found to their chagrin when they go to court and find their AI has made up case law precedents! By more tightly controlling the sources, AI hallucinations are reduced.

Studio Output Options: This is where NotebookLM really stands out from the pack. The ability to create audio reviews, podcasts, explainer videos, slide decks, mind maps, reports, and tables is something no other AI tool does at this level.

Google Workspace integration: Because NotebookLM is part of Google, it is tightly integrated with the Google ecosystem such as Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Drive. Also the Google AI paid memberships give you not only upgraded access to NotebookLM, but also to Google’s other AI tools like Gemini, Flow, Jules, Antigravity. So you are getting several upgraded AI tools for the price of one. In addition, the upgraded Google AI memberships give you additional storage in your Google Workspace, excellent for those of us pushing the limits on Google Drive and Gmail.

NotebookLM Drawbacks

Of course, as with any tool, there are some drawbacks. Here are a few areas where we hope NotebookLM improves in future.

Slow Creation Times: While the output in the Studio is amazing, it does take some time to create each studio item. So I usually hit the create button and then go work on something else for a bit and come back.

Slide Deck: While the slide decks come out lovely, they can’t easily be edited. You can’t just add a single slide or edit directly within slides like you do with Gamma.  Editing is only done by going to each slide, suggesting changes in the chat box for each slide, then generating a revised deck.

MindMaps:  The mind maps can’t be edited or exported to other mind map formats, only downloaded as an image (.png) file

Note Taking: NotebookLM lacks common note taking app features like creating new notes (have to paste text or use Google Drive), bi-directional linking or the ability to access information across multiple notebooks. This makes it difficult to use as a primary note-taking tool.

Graphic Creation: While NotebookLM is great at creating infographics, it is not great at creating other graphics, so I use Gemini and Nano Banana for other graphics.

Cross-Notebook Information Retrieval: You cannot automatically put in information across multiple notebooks, instead you would have to add the sources manually.

Notebook Organization: There is no folder, or subfolder system, so as your number of notebooks grow, especially if you have hundreds of notebooks over time, it can be hard to find the one you want.

NotebookLM Use Cases for Business

And now for the focus of this article, exploring NotebookLM use cases that actually help you in your work or business. Here are the broad categories where I have found NotebookLM useful so far:

• Content Creation
• Customer Support
• Hiring
• Human Resources
• Learning & Skill Development
• Job Search
• Meetings
• Personal Knowledge Management System (PKMS)
• Project Management
• Research
• Sales Pages & Marketing Emails
• Strategic Planning

Content Creation

NotebookLM’s wide range of export formats makes it a great tool for creating content for the web, YouTube and social media. With NotebookLM, you can quickly create

• Explainer videos
• Podcasts and audio overviews
• Social media messages
• Infographics
• Reddit posts
• Blog posts
• Publishing interactive guides

Customer Support

Optimize your customer support by using NotebookLM to create comprehensive product knowledge bases that your support team can use to improve response time and accuracy of their responses. Upload product documentation, troubleshooting guides, FAQs, and past support tickets so your support team can query the notebook and get accurate answers with source citations.

Hiring

You can upload your hiring needs and NotebookLM can be used for:

• Creating job descriptions
• Insights into the job market, salary expectations in the current job market, skill shortages, etc
• Requirement summaries – create a list of must-have, should-have and nice-to-have skills
• Making a list of interview questions to find out if the candidates meet the requirements
• Creating practice interviews
• Summarize interview transcripts
• Screen applications to find ones worth interviewing – identify and rank candidates
• Analyze applications and compile insights
• Identify blind spots about a candidate
• Create a virtual hiring expert to assist you with the hiring
• Create a slide deck of your top candidates to present to your hiring team
• Create audio summaries of the top candidates and interact like a podcast host
• Turn hiring into a learning system, learning from past hires and employee performance and applying this to future hires
• Draft offer and follow-up communications

Human Resources

Use NotebookLM for:

• Hiring: See above
• Onboarding: Upload employee handbooks, company policies and training materials to create study guides, FAQs and learning tutors. Employees can ask questions in natural languages and get answers.
• Employee Knowledge Base: A dynamic, searchable library of all your training materials, company policies, SOPs, employee handbooks, etc.
• Performance Management Support: Keep all performance-related documents in one place and NotebookLM can help HR managers analyze trends, summarize feedback and identify discussion points for performance meetings.
• Objective Evaluation: NotebookLM can help create an objective evaluation of the employee’s performance to the goals and KPIs.
• Employee Training: See Learning & Skill Development below.
• Information Triage: If you have a lot of information coming in such as legal updates or information in Slack channels, you can use NotebookLM to triage the data, and then create concise reports or explainer videos to keep everyone updated.
• FAQs: Use NotebookLM to quickly create Frequently Asked Questions manuals for your employees.
• Difficult Meetings: Use NotebookLM to script and practice difficult meetings such as when you need to reprimand or terminate an employee.
• Safety Manual/Reports: Use NotebookLM to manage safety manuals, incident reports and to create safety training materials.
• People Analytics: Use NotebookLM to create surveys, exit surveys, feedback forms, and turn the date into actional insights.

Learning & Skill Development

NotebookLM is a fantastic tool for students, employees, or anyone needing to learn and develop skills. You can use NotebookLM to:

• Existing Learning Resources: Pull together the school or internal learning resources (course notes, instructional materials, recordings, SOPs, employee manuals, etc.) to create your own training resource centre
• Find Learning Resources: Find and incorporate new, authoritative sources online
• Audio on the Go: Create audio overviews for learning while you commute, exercise, or walk your dog
• Training Videos: Create explainer videos to simplify concepts and help you learn visually and auditorily
• Study Aids: Create flash cards and quizzes for studying
• Training Library: Create a range of training materials and turn them into a knowledge for students or employees
• Interactive Tutor: You can also create a custom learning guide within NotebookLM that will ask you questions and act as a personal tutor on any topic
• Learning Formats: In addition to explainer videos, audio overviews, and study aids, you can also create mind maps, infographics, FAQs and more
• Feedback: You can upload transcripts of your sales calls or email conversations and get feedback on your performance so you can improve. You can also have NotebookLM create scenarios such as common objections to the points you are trying to make so you can practice your arguments and get feedback on them
• Critical Thinking:  You can ask questions such as “What am I missing?” to find blind spots in your thinking
• Visual Knowledge Mapping; Use the mind map function in NotebookLM to provide a more visual overview of any information
• Online Course/Publishing: While reviewing some of the shared template notebooks from others, I noticed a couple where people used the paste option to add course notes in a lesson-by-lesson basis, and then the studio to output learning materials and the students could use chat to interact with the material

Meetings & Internal Communications

Use NotebookLM to:

• Prep for meetings and create agendas
• Pull out action items from transcribed meeting notes
• Analyze group chats or Slack messages to find to-do items
• Prepare scripts for difficult meetings such as layoff notices

Personal Knowledge Management System (PKMS)

Many of us work to create our own personal knowledge management system or PKMS. The goal of these systems is to capture knowledge, make useful connections between notes in our knowledge base,  be able to retrieve knowledge and use the knowledge. For most of use, this means we have extensive notes taken in systems like UpNote, OneNote or Notion and spend a lot of time creating connections between notes. But we tend to struggle with how to actually turn these notes into actionable intel. NotebookLM helps fill this gap because you can use your existing notes, use the AI chat to interact with the knowledge and solve the problems you need solved, then create outputs like explainer videos, slide decks, audio overview, reports, and more. This knowledge synthesis is the missing part of the puzzle for most PKMS and note-taking systems.

Project Management

Use Notebook LM as a central hub to organize and analyze everything to do with a project – meeting notes, action items, status reports, emails, etc.

Research

• General Research: While my regular AI tools are great for research and brainstorming, NotebookLM is fast becoming my favorite for deeper research, primarily because I have more control over the sources. With regular AIs, I ask the question and get an AI-synthesized answer. Usually this is quite useful. But with NotebookLM, I can review each source, removing or turning off the ones that I don’t find credible or aren’t going the direction I want. I can add specific sources I know are of high quality and it is easy to add my own knowledge sources (my ebooks, online courses, blog, etc).
• Consulting: Recently, I was working on a consulting project with a client, helping them create AI workflows for email handling within Gmail. I was able to pull in information from multiple sources, the web, my Inbox Zero course, the client’s website, the client’s SOPs (standard operating procedures) and some email answer templates they had stored in Google Drive. This ability to pull together client information meant I was able to create more powerful AI workflows, much faster than I have in the past.

Sales & Marketing

You can train NotebookLM using:

• Your in-house sales materials
• Sales training from the best known sales trainers
• Videos of you doing sales proposals
• Sales call transcripts
• Common objections from sales emails and chats
• Support emails and chat transcripts
• Marketing campaign results
• Web traffic and SEO results including what key word most people are searching for
• Market research – competitor strategies and activities, industry publications, etc

You can analyze the above and:

• Find what works and what doesn’t
• Generate revises sales strategies and marketing channels
• Generate a new strategic marketing plan based on your results so far and competitor analysis and industry trends
• Create virtual focus groups using information from support emails and chats

Then you can use NotebookLM to create your sales materials, including:

• Sales slide decks
• Marketing and outreach emails
• Explainer videos
• FAQs
• Sales playbooks
• Proposal creation from RFPs (Request for Proposals)

Strategic Planning

For strategic planning, you can use NotebookLM to:

• Create a Centralized Knowledge Hub: Pull together your strategic documents, like industry reports, competitor reports, business plans, lean canvas, market analyses, performance reports, client feedback, support queries, and customer personas.
• Add Virtual Experts: Upload strategic planning guides, best practices, templates, and techniques from recognized experts.
• Output: You can output content as mind maps or slideshows for planning presentations and discussions.
• Action Plan: Create goals and action plans from your planning process and assign these goals and tasks to your team.

I hope you have enjoyed the NotebookLM use case video and article. Need help with NotebookLM or incorporating AI into your daily workflow? Reach out for a discovery call. https://bit.ly/garland-calendar

It’s the Holy Grail, isn’t it? “One tool to rule them all.” The idea that you can run your business in a single tool instead of stitching together a “Frankensystem” from multiple tools. This is the “promise” of Go High Level, but is it real, or just snake oil? Let’s find out in Captain Time’s Go High Level Review.

Go High Level Features

Here are the functions that Go High Level promises:

• CRM & Pipeline Management
• Sales Funnels
• Email Marketing
• Surveys & Forms
• Booking & Appointments
• SMS Marketing
• Workflow Automations
• Online Courses
• Reputation Management
• Tracking and Analytics
• Online Communities
• Website Builder
• Document Signing
• Multi-user Support

Very impressive, but how does it all stack up in real life? I have been using Go High Level for a few months now and have moved my entire business to the tool, so I thought it was time to go through my experience so far in a Go High Level Review.

CRM, Pipeline Management & Sales Funnels

I have used many CRMs over the years. ACT!, Essential PIM, Insightly, Hubspot, and most recently, Less Annoying CRM (LACRM).  I liked Less Annoying CRM for it’s clean interface and affordable pricing for small businesses at only $15 per month for a single user. So how does Go High Level CRM compare?

1. User Interface: While I do find the user interface of Go High Level more complex than LACRM, a lot of this is because it has so many other features and options built in. I find that Go High Level is able to do many things that other CRMs are not, largely because everything is in one system.
2. Pipeline: The sales pipeline in Go High Level is very robust.
3. Automation: Automation is where Go High Level shines. The automation is extensive and has an AI component where you can ask AI to set up the automation for you.
4. Integrations: Go High Level is a leading business management tool so lots of other tools will integrate with it.
5. Scalability: Go High Level offers unlimited members and contacts so it will scale as your business grows. Also, I can bring in as many other team members (such as virtual assistants or employees) at no extra charge, unlike many other CRMs that sell their subscriptions per user per month. (See my subscription rant here.)

Overall, I find Go High Level very powerful and robust as a CRM and easy to work within for my daily outreach. Plus the extra automation and scaling are very useful for me.

Replaces tools like HubSpot, Less Annoying CRM, Insightly, or Sales Force.

Social Media Marketing

Honestly, I didn’t hold out much hope that Go High Level would be able to do well in managing my social media, but I was pleasantly surprised. The Social Calendar view is great for seeing what days I don’t have any social posts scheduled for. The tool makes it easy to schedule in the future so I can set up posts for upcoming events like Valentine’s Day, Xmas, other holidays, Black Friday, etc. I like that I can have my posts for the next month set up ahead of time so I don’t have to worry about posting each day. Go High Level also provides statistics so you can compare your engagement levels on social media over time.

Replaces tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, or Sprout Social.

Booking Calendar

As a productivity coach, a booking calendar is critical! Otherwise I go back and forth with clients for weeks trying to find a meeting time that works for both of us. I am able to set up Go High Level booking calendars such as one for discovery calls and one for coaching bookings. Now my clients can see all my open meeting slots right on an easy to use page in their local time zones. The booking calendar is linked to my Google Calendar so it picks up my unavailable times and adds new bookings right into my Google Calendar. I am also able to control the times of day I accept bookings, create buffers between meetings (highly recommend so you are running from call to call) and a maximum number of calls in a day.

Replaces tools like Book Like a Boss, Calendly, or Tidy Cal.

Document Signing

I haven’t tried this feature yet, but Go High Level offers document signing so it replaces tools like Docusign and PandaDoc.

Email Marketing

This is another area where I was concerned Go High Level might not be as capable as my previous tool, MailerLite. But, once again, Go High Level didn’t disappoint. Like MailerLite, Go High Level had a drag and drop email builder system and you can easily manage your email lists simply by adding tags to your contacts. Go High Level also lets you set up subscriber forms so people can easily add themselves to your email lists.

Replaces tools like MailerLite, Mail Chimp or Constant Contact.

Membership and Online Courses

With the online course and membership functions, I started to see how Go High Level might be cheaper than my existing tech stack. After all, I had only a small team and Less Annoying CRM and MailerLite were relatively inexpensive. But tools like Skool started at $99 per month US to host online courses. I have added both my existing masterclasses “Time Management: Step by Step” and “Level Up Your Follow-Up” to Go High Level and it is a very capable online course platform. GHL also has a community feature and I will be setting that up soon for my Time Guild members.

Replaces tools like Mighty Networks, Teachable, Skool, or Thinkific.

Affiliate Marketing

I have tried this function yet, but I like that I can set up an affiliate program for my online courses or Time Guild coaching programs right in the same system I am selling from.

Replaces tools like Post Affiliate Pro, Rewardful, or Partnerstack

Web Building

I haven’t tried this function yet because I have a well-built WordPress site that ranks well in the search engines, but I believe this tool could be useful for people just starting out.

Replaces WordPress.

Multi-User Support

My biggest complaint about software subscriptions is that almost all of them are “per user/per month.” So a piece of software that seems affordable at $25 per month quickly becomes a major cost as you start adding team members. That $25 per user per month becomes $125 per month if you have 5 team members and $625 per month is you have 25 members on your team. Suddenly you are paying thousands of dollars per month for software you don’t even own!

Go High Level has a single price for UNLIMITED users, making it very affordable for teams to adopt.

Pricing

But what about the price? Can Go High Level save you money or is it too expensive for small business owners? The answer is that it depends. Go High Level can save you money, especially if you have a team working with you. For example, I often use 2-3 virtual assistants to help me with my work, so per user/per month subscriptions add up fast. Here is a table showing what it would cost to replicate Go High Level functionality with other leading tools along with the expanded costs for multiple users.

As you can see, you can save money even with a single user if you are using a similar range of tools to replicate Go High Level’s functionality.

Recommended Integration: Add To CRM

A great add on tool I use for Go High Level is Add to CRM. Add to CRM is a browser extension that lets me easily add LinkedIn profile contacts into Go High Level, Less Annoying CRM and many other CRMs. Saves me a ton of time each with with my LinkedIn outreach as it makes LinkedIn and Go High Level play nice together.

Go High Level Support

Because of it’s complexity, I highly recommend you work with a good quality consultant/support team plus training when you are switching to or using Go High Level. You will find good support critical as you master this complex tool.

Go High Level Review Conclusion

In conclusion, I highly recommend Go High Level for companies with multiple team members or companies, organizations looking to be able to scale, and people planning to offer online courses or online communities.. If you are a solopreneur who won’t be offering online courses, you can probably save money with a tool stack like Less Annoying CRM, Mailerlite, and Book Like a Boss.

I have partnered with the Productivity Hub to offer my subscribers and coaching members unlimited LIVE support for Go High Level, something that is not offered much elsewhere. In addition to the live support, if you purchase Go High Level through the Productivity Hub, you get 4 onboarding calls as well along with training sessions. And my Time Guild members also receive help with their GHL systems in our group coaching sessions, via unlimited support with me, and via our online community. Custom work by GHL consultants can add up to thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, so the partnership offer I have put together can save you thousands of dollars. Check out our Go High Level special offer here.

Reach out if you have questions about our Go High Level offer.

If you’ve spent much time researching time management methods, you will soon come across The Pomodoro Technique. Here is Captain Time’s take on this very popular productivity method, In my Pomodoro Technique review, we will explore what the Pomodoro technique is, where it helps, and some criticisms from people who have tried it.

Pomodoro Technique Review: Named after a tomato!

The Pomodoro Technique was developed in the late 1980s by Italian university student, Francesco Cirillo. He would use a kitchen countdown timer to work in short, focused sprints and then take a break. The kitchen timer he used was shaped like a tomato, so he named the method the Pomodoro Technique, “pomodoro” being Italian for tomato.

Pomodoro Structure

You set a timer for 25 minutes, then focus ONLY on that task or project for 25 minutes. Then take a 5-minute break. I usually recommend moving around and stretching for the 5 minutes. Then you reset the timer and work another 25 minutes, then a 5-minute break again. After 3-4 “pomodoros” you take a longer break of 15-30 minutes.

Growth of the Technique

In the early 2000s, Cirillo released a free PDF guide explaining the technique. The technique spread through early productivity blogs and tech forums and became one of the best-known productivity techniques today.

Where Do I Get a Pomodoro Timer?

You can use a kitchen timer, like Cirillo (tomato shape optional). Or you can use your timer functions on your smart phone or a web-based countdown timer. The default clock apps on smartphones usually have a countdown timer function. Many productivity tools, like xTiles also have a timer built in. Here is a Pomodoro Timer from the Google Play Store I use for Android.

What if I am Interrupted?

It is best to try to work focused on a project or task for an uninterrupted 25 minutes, but if you are interrupted, just pause the timer, deal with the interruption, then come back to the project and restart the timer to finish out your 25 minutes of work.

Why Does the Pomodoro Technique Work?

1. Sets Intention: When you set the intention to work on a project for 25 minutes of uninterrupted focus,  this creates dedicated time blocks to work on the project and sets the intention to work on the project instead of getting distracted by other work.
2. Works in Batches: It is inefficient to work on a budget for 5 minutes, answer 1 email, then work on a client project for 1 minute, then make one phone call, then back to the budget for 5 minutes. Instead, work in batches during a set 25-minute block of time for your budget, then 25 minutes for client projects, 25 minutes for emails, etc.
3. Creates Focus: Focus is our superpower. You will be amazed at how much you get done in 25 minutes of uninterrupted deep focus work.
4. Less Procrastination:: Have an important project you really don’t feel like working on? We all have these! I find the Pomodoro technique helps by you knowing you only have to spend 25 minutes on the project, and then you can move on to the next one.

Common Criticisms of the Pomodoro Technique

No one productivity technique works for everyone. Here are some common criticisms of the Pomodoro technique.

1. Deep Focus Interruption: If you are “in the zone” a timer ringing at 25 minutes and having to switch to another project or task can break your momentum.
2. Complex Tasks: Some complicated tasks might require deep thinking that takes 20 minutes just to “warm up” so 25 minutes of focus isn’t enough.
3. Meeting Conflicts: It’s hard to stay on a strict Pomodoro schedule when you have back-to-back in-person or online meetings.
4. Stress/Rigidity: Some people feel more stressed by the ticking countdown clock than supported by it.

Overcoming the Criticisms

You can overcome some of these criticisms by using longer blocks of time, such as an hour for complex tasks. For stess/rigidity, you could set the timer, then put it face down so you can’t see it. For the problem of too many meetings, you can hire me to run my High Impact Meetings That Drive Results workshop for your team to improve meeting effectiveness and cut down on the total number of meetings. 😀

So, Does Garland Use The Pomodoro Technique?

Yes, Captain Time does use the Pomodoro Technique, especially for my deep focus tasks. My morning time blocks often consist of “pomodoros” for Content Creation, Marketing, Workshop Creation, and New Product Development. My afternoon time blocks include Email Processing, Meetings, and Coaching and Mastermind sessions.

Pomodoro Technique Review Conclusion

I highly recommend the Pomodoro Technique for the following reasons:

• Helps you set a productivity intention
• Reduces distractions and encourages deep focus
• Encourages you to more efficiently complete your work in batches of similar work
• Helps you beat procrastination
• Helps you “eat the frog first’ – helps you work on difficult, complex tasks for short sprints

If you tried the technique and it didn’t work for you, try some of the criticism workarounds above,

Want help implementing the Pomodoro Technique or improving your productivity? Join my Time Guild. If you enjoyed this Pomodoro Technique review, please hit the “Like” and “Subscribe” buttons on the video above,

AI is fast changing how many of us work. Most of us are learning how to use AI prompts to quickly generate ideas and complete our work faster. In this video, I will show you my technique for creating your own AI prompt template library so you can easily save your best AI prompts and call up any AI prompt in seconds, saving you hours every week.

Why an AI Prompt Template Library?

While AI is saving me loads of time each week, I find I am writing a LOT of AI prompts! I soon noticed that my results were better when I wrote a better prompt, so it became important to save my best prompts as AI prompt templates instead of wasting time rewriting the same prompts over and over. Here are the benefits I have found by building my own AI prompt template library.

• Saving a LOT of prompt writing time
• Better AI output because I am using a proven template I have tested over time, rather than coming up with a slightly different prompt each time
• The ability to add variables such as topic, type, purpose, etc.
• The ability to share my best prompts with my team

Use Cases

Here are some of the prompt templates I have created:

• Headline Creator: an AI prompt to generate headline ideas for my blog articles and YouTube videos.
• Social Media Post Creator: This prompt quickly creates a social media post in my voice, and I just provide variables such as the topic and where I want the post to link to.
• Article Outline Creator: Creates an outline on a topic I have chosen for my Time Tips blog.
• Book Summary: This prompt summarizes any business book and provides an easy-to-understand summary and action checklist I can use to implement the book’s principles.
• Daily News Digest: This creates an AI summary of daily local and International news in my preferred categories, along with some fun ideas like image of the day, today’s fact, word of the day, day in history, and a new AI prompt idea.
• Email Marketing Series: This prompt creates a series of marketing emails on a new product or service I am launching.
• Image Prompt: This creates AI images for my YouTube videos, website, product,  and social media posts in the steampunk theme I use as part of my branding.
• Business Networking Introductions: I use this AI prompt for creating new, fresh, and interesting ways to introduce myself at business networking meetings.
• Online Course Lessons: This prompt grabs my videos and creates a description of each lesson for my online courses and masterclasses.
• Presentation Creation: This AI prompt creates entire presentations in just minutes using the Gamma app.
• Workshop Topic Generator: Generates workshop topic ideas for my future workshops and webinars.

In each case, I write the prompt once and immediately save it to my library. I then use the prompt regularly and keep tweaking it until I am happy with the results. My prompts are living documents that get better over time.

Tools Needed

Here are the tools needed to create your own AI prompt template library.

1. Any AI agent
2. Text Expander: I use TextBlaze for this.

How I use TextBlaze for my AI Prompt Template Library

Instead of saving my prompts in a document and having to look up the document and then copying and pasting, I use TextBlaze. TextBlaze is a tool that runs in the background on my computer and lets me call up any prompt (or any other document, URL, etc.) lightning-fast using just a few keystrokes.

I put /p in front of the prompt as my structure. So a prompt will look like /p[prompt name]. For example, I can call up my Book Summary prompt by typing /pbook, and this prompt will show up:

Please analyze the book, book title by author and provide the following:

1. A concise summary of the book in 3-5 paragraphs, covering:
– The main theme or central idea
– Key arguments or concepts presented
– Notable examples or case studies used
– The author’s conclusions or recommendations

2. A list of the 5-7 most important principles or lessons from the book

3. For each principle, create a practical, actionable checklist of 3-5 items that a reader could use to apply this principle in their life or work. Each checklist item should be clear, specific, and achievable.

4. Conclude with a brief statement (2-3 sentences) on the book’s potential impact or relevance for readers.

Please ensure the summary and checklists are clear, concise, and directly applicable to real-life situations. Use bullet points or numbered lists for clarity where appropriate.

The two variables (book title) and (author), I fill in when the Text Blaze window comes up when I type /pbook, and then, when I click on the [Insert] command, the prompt with the book title and author will drop into whichever AI tool I prefer.

Pro tip: You can also add [ENTER] onto the end of your prompt in TextBlaze, and the prompt will run in your AI chat automatically after the insert.

I currently have over 25 AI prompt templates in my library with more being added on a weekly basis. I also use an AI Swipe technique (based on the old copy swipe file idea) where I keep watch out for useful AI prompts shared by others, and replicate them in my own library.

The Result

Blazing fast call-ups of proven AI prompt templates in seconds. My library saves me hours every week of trying to write the perfect prompts. I make it a policy to never write the same text twice, so I always save my best sales letters, introductions, support replies, etc. in Text Blaze. Expanding this to AI prompts saves me even more time as I use AI on almost every task I work on.

Please hit the “Like” and “Subscribe” buttons on the YouTube video above to help others find this content.

Want to learn how to use AI for productivity and reclaim 10-15 hours every week. Join our affordable group coaching program, The Time Guild. Weekly masterminds, exclusive webinars, and Captain Time on retainer!

This isn’t just another tech review, it is a real-time test from someone who speaks 50+ times per year and needs to create presentations that WOW my audience without spending days to create each presentation. In the past, I have used PowerPoint for my presentations, but recently I have been using an AI-powered PowerPoint alternative to create my presentations. Here is my Gamma App review from my professional speaker’s perspective and that of my Captain Time persona, who is obsessed with saving time.

If you like the video below, please hit “Like” and “Subscribe” to help others find this content.

The PowerPoint Problem 

We’ve all heard of “Death by PowerPoint” and had to sit through agonizing presentations of slide after slide of walls of text with hard-to-understand charts. This isn’t PowerPoint’s fault. When a slideshow presentation is created by a talented graphic designer and the content is written by a professional copywriter, the slides will look amazing, and the content will have a powerful punch. PowerPoint is very capable of delivering amazing keynote presentations.

But most of us aren’t graphic designers or professional copywriters, and we may not have the budget or time to bring in these talents on every slide show. Even companies with large budgets only use graphic designers and copywriters for important events like AGMs or product launches, so most internal presentations have to be done by poor saps like us without these skills. But we still need to create great presentations to impress our management team, colleagues, investors, stakeholders, and the public even without these skills. So, we plod along, trying to find useful templates and doing the best we could, until Gamma App came along.

PowerPoint Alternative: Gamma App

For many of us, AI has been a game-changer. AI has been my research assistant, my copywriter, my marketing assistant, my social media manager, my financial analyst, and much more, saving me many hours every week. And now, with Gamma, it has become my assistant for creating presentations.

What is Gamma App?

Gamma App is an AI-powered presentation tool. It works entirely in your browser, so there are no downloads required. You can generate a new presentation from a one-line AI prompt, paste in text, notes, an outline, or existing content, import a file or a URL, or generate a presentation from a template. No matter how you start the presentation generation, it will be created in just a few minutes. When I demonstrate this live, people in the audience are blown away. See the video above for an example of this.

Gamma not only does presentations, but also documents and webpages. Gamma saves me 2-5 hours of work for EACH presentation I do.

Gamma Features

When adding your prompt, you choose whether you want a:

• presentation
• webpage
• document
• or social message

You can also choose how many cards (slides) you want. You can choose to have Gamma AI create classic-style slides, which creates slides with editable text, images, and layout blocks.  Once your presentation is created, you can also ask AI to create additional slides based on a prompt. You can edit the graphics to create new AI graphics, or upload stock photos or images from your hard drive. You can edit each slide manually, just like with PowerPoint or by asking Gamma AI for changes. You can also choose a Studio option where every card is a single image with embedded text that you can only edit with AI. The designs are responsive so they will look good on any device.

By default, the slides are fluid, meaning they change size based on the content, but you can choose to lock the cards to a 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratio.

Gamma also quickly researches and creates:

• Charts
• Infographics
• Timelines
• Diagrams

You can also share your presentations online with a sharing link, or export as pdf, PowerPoint, Google Slides, or PNG images, or embed the presentation into your website using an embed code created by Gamma. Or you can collaborate with others and control whether they can just view, comment or edit.

Presenting with Gamma

Like PowerPoint, Gamma lets you present in a browser tab, in full screen, or with a presenter view. My remote presentation tool works with Gamma, allowing me to move slides forward with a click. One caution – you will need to have an Internet connection to present directly from Gamma. As a backup, I usually export a copy of Gamma as a PowerPoint, but you need to check the PowerPoint version as some fonts and alignment on slides may be lost when exporting.

How I use Gamma Today

Originally, I was using Gamma as a PowerPoint alternative, but its ease of use and capabilities soon had me expanding my use cases. Here are some of the expanded ways I use Gamma:

• Presentations
• Proposals
• Training
• Pitch decks
• Portfolios
• Client testimonials
• Case studies
• Client onboarding
• Online courses and more

Gamma’s ability to be shared with a live link or by exporting to PDF is brilliant for sharing proposals and other marketing assets.

Gamma App Pricing

As of the time of writing this article, here is how Gamma pricing works for individuals:

• Free: Limited to 10 cards per prompt – Gamma branding
• Plus: $10 per seat per month – up to 20 cards per prompt – 400 credits for premium features
• Pro: $25 per seat per month – up to 60 cards per prompt – 1,000 monthly credits
• Ultra: $100 per seat per month – Up to 75 cards per prompt – 4,000 monthly credits

The premium credits are used for Agent, Premium AI models and API access. A nice thing about the premium credits is that they roll over up to 2x for the months you don’t use all your credits. Like most subscriptions, you save when paying annually. I am using the individual Pro plan which works very well for my needs as a professional speaker – $25 per month or $216 per year ($18/month equivalent). Given how many hours Gamma saves me in a month, the $25 per month monthly subscription rate pays for itself with just 1 presentation per month.

Captain Time’s Gamma App Review Rating as a PowerPoint Alternative

Gamma App Pros and Cons

While Gamma is amazing and well worth purchasing in my mind, no tool is perfect. Here are some pros and cons of Gamma.

Pros

• Create presentations in a fraction of the time
• Multiple AI image modes to work with
• Easy to share and export
• Stunning AI custom slide creation
• Mobile-responsive
• Easy to collaborate

Cons

• No offline mode
• No ability to set the presentation to loop and run in a kiosk mode in PowerPoint
• Can’t set the overall context for AI, so you have to include it in every prompt

To compensate for the lack of an offline mode in Gamma, I export to PowerPoint, but sometimes have to do extra work to correct some slide fonts and alignment. In my mind, this is a key missing feature that would make Gamma near perfect. Also, for some of my workshops, I like to have a slideshow running in the background. With Gamma, you can’t set automatic transitions or loop a presentation to run until you hit [Esc]. Once again, I have to export as PowerPoint to use my presentation that way.

If Gamma had offline and the ability to loop presentations, I would rate it 5/5. But, I highly recommend Gamma as a PowerPoint alternative because of all the time it saves me as a professional speaker. You can try Gamma out here.

Digital business cards are becoming more popular. But, before you run out and start buying digital business card software subscriptions, you might want to look at a free digital business card you already have and didn’t know about – LinkedIn. In this LinkedIn QR code tutorial, I will show you how to quickly access and share your LinkedIn QR code digital business card at networking events.

If you are a business professional, chances are you already have a LinkedIn profile. Here is how to access your LinkedIn QR code. See the video demo above for a video “how-to.”

Step 1: Install: Install LinkedIn on your SmartPhone: If you don’t already have the LinkedIn app on your smartphone, install it from the Google Play Store or the Apple Store.

Step 2: Login: Login into the LinkedIn app on your smartphone.

Step 3: Search: Click anywhere in the search bar. Once Search comes up, look for the LinkedIn QR code symbol on the far right below the search bar, to the right of Show All.

Once you have found the QR code icon, click on it and your code will show on your smartphone screen like this:

Step 4: Show Code: Now your code is showing and can be scanned by anyone else using either the Linkedin app on their own smartphone or by just using the camera on their smartphone. I recommend having this preloaded on your smartphone when you walk into a business networking meeting. You can also share the code via email or social media or download it as an image into your photo gallery.

Step 5: Scan: if someone else has their LinkedIn QR code up, you can Scan it using the Scan tab at the top right of the screen while you are showing the code. Only one of you needs to Scan and connect on LinkedIn.

Now you are connected on LinkedIn, and you can add them to your favorite CRM for follow-up and adding notes about your meeting. To make this work, both people do need to have the LinkedIn app on their smartphone, but having the LinkedIn app is common for professionals who embrace business networking.

Test Your LinkedIn QR Code Link

Open the LinkedIn app and scan Captain Time’s QR code above to connect with me on LinkedIn if you aren’t already connected with me. Otherwise, test it at your next business networking meeting.

In this Productivity interview, Captain Time interviews Rhonda Bowen for some great productivity insights from an American running a business in Germany.

Rhonda L. Bowen is a global strategic communication guide with over 35 years’ experience. An American living in Germany since 1983, she has worked with people from more than 70 countries. Since 1988 she has brought insights and support to thousands of BEST professionals (business, engineering, science and technology). Through improved communication, her clients save resources and enhance their success. Her programs and services include online and offline facilitation, individual and team coaching, programs for professional services providers and negotiation seminars. She supports others through her interactive sessions called success swarms, building on the idea of swarm intelligence in nature. These are based on the principle of wispiration in action, a combination of wisdom and inspiration shared in the group to provide options for finding practical ways to apply what has been learned. She believes in combining natural intelligence, human intelligence and artificial intelligence to co-create the solutions needed to make the world a better place. Rhonda is also active in many global organizations to improve people’s lives, including World Values Day and Soroptimist International. She also serves as a lay speaker for her church, not only in her own congregation, but many neighboring ones as well. She loves to travel and play the piano.

Connect with Rhonda at https://linktr.ee/rhondal.bowen.