These are the seven tools I open every single morning to run two companies with a team of three. No sponsored picks — just what actually works.

I break down exactly how I use each one, what it costs, and why it earned a spot in my daily stack. Total cost: about $125/month. That’s less than one freelancer for one day.

When you’re running multiple businesses with a tiny team, your stack has to cover four things: thinking, creating, automating, and communicating. Every tool below earns its keep by doing at least one of those better than I can on my own.

Last week, I ran a livestream event for a few thousand people. I shipped a feature on my SaaS product. I managed client deliverables. And I still made it home for dinner with my wife and two-year-old.

A year ago, that literally never would have been possible. It would have buried me.

The difference isn’t that I’m working harder. The difference is that I stopped doing all of the work myself.

#plex #homelab

I needed to remember this today and maybe this helps some else out too!

Allow the server to use the repo her:

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/plexmediaserver.list

Run this command to edit

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list.d/plexmediaserver.list

and remove the # before the line of

#deb https://downloads.plex.tv/repo/deb/ public main

run the following to see if that worked and plex is recognized for update

sudo apt list --upgradebale

Then just

sudo apt update && apt upgrade or sudo apt update && upgrade plexmediaserver

I’ve been playing around with some of the new “deeper” thinking models. I enjoyed this output from ChatGPT DeepResearch so much, I figured I’d publish it here. Enjoy, for what it’s worth!

[!NOTE] AI Generated Content Notice: This article was written by OpenAI DeepSearch

Introduction

Coffee has evolved from a generic commodity into an artisanal product celebrated for its diversity of origins and brewing methods. In modern specialty coffee culture – often called the “third wave” – single-origin coffee and meticulous pour-over brewing have become hallmarks of quality. This report explores the history and significance of single-origin coffee, the rise of pour-over brewing, key milestones in specialty coffee’s development, and why these trends are favored by enthusiasts.

Outcome: Generate a shopping list for three different vendors by uploading a photo of our inventory worksheet.

Solution: Use a custom GPT to train on simple data and take advantage of the built-in photo recognition (OCR).

Maintaining a well stocked kitchen for a coffee shop is something I underestimated. It’s not complex, but it is very detail oriented and can have a lot of steps. Having an item out of stock can create a poor customer experience, and if the customer came just for that item, they might not come back.

For as long as I’ve been into coffee, I’ve been chasing the perfect technique for pour over coffee. Over time, I’ve started to dislike and call most coffee I brew at home “bad coffee.”

Over 15 years ago, I started brewing with the V60, maybe one of the most visual iconic brewing methods for coffee. This also happens to be one of the most temperamental brewing devices. It can extract the most wonderful and clean cup of coffee but if not dialed in precisely, the brew can swing wildly to over or under extracted.

“Working smarter, not harder” could be one way to describe my entire life. I always try to do things the “smart way.” Not necessarily to avoid hard work, but because I’ve always thought that was the way to success. Oftentimes, the smart way is more work than just doing the damn thing.

I have spent incredible amounts of time coding a tool to help me do something that took 3–5 times longer than just writing the document, provisioning a live stream, or simply writing the documentation. I get this dopamine hit, this crazy little rush when I have the idea of, “I know a faster/better way to do this!” It has been nearly impossible to avoid then doing that thing.

Is this you:

“I use the same coffee every day… why does my each brew taste so different?!”

Two words:

Brewing Ratios!

Think of them as the recipe that makes or breaks your coffee experience.

Imagine you’re in the kitchen, whipping up your favorite dish. Just like adjusting salt and pepper to taste, brewing ratios tweak the balance between coffee and water. This little tweak can be a game-changer, bringing out hidden flavors in your beans and creating a perfectly balanced cup that dances on your taste buds.

Drinking great coffee, and brewing great coffee, is all about quality in, quality out. Beans, water, and your equipment all add to the quality of your cup, and in this article, we’re going to look at how the freshness of your beans impacts your coffee and how you can put time on your side.

Good coffee is all about aroma and flavors

To start, there are over 800 individual flavor compounds identified in coffee. These compounds are responsible for the array of complex tastes and aromas that we experience when drinking coffee. They can range from fruity and floral to nutty and spicy, or even earthy and smoky.

5 key elements to making great coffee at home

Before I opened a coffee shop, I made coffee at home every single day for over 15 years. I’ve been where you are and drank A LOT coffee, great, good, bad, and weird. For years I was chasing the perfect cup and event went so far as to keep a “brew journal” where I logged every single cup I made for 6 months and exactly what changes I made to my brew method each time.