4 AI Tools I Use Weekly and How Much They Cost... Totaling LESS than $70 USD/Month

What AI tools do I actually use REGULARLY?  📊 ✍️ 🎨 🎙️

I share my favorite 4 AI tools and how much they cost.

EACH saves me hours of time and work daily.

Dr. Joan Palmiter Bajorek discusses 4 essential AI tools that enhance productivity and efficiency in various tasks. Tools for data management, writing assistance, design, and video/audio/podcasting. 

YES. We did use 2 of these tools in the creation of this podcast episode!

Sound Bites

• "Anthropic is top tier today."
• "Claude is killing it!"
• "These are efficiency tools."

For each tool, we talk product features, pricing, and practical applications, emphasizing their role in streamlining workflows and improving output quality.

Riverside Code: https://www.riverside.fm/?via=yourairoadmap

Beyond the editing, Riverside also gives you show notes, a summary, transcript, and much more that also need to be edited manually.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to AI Tools
• 2:33 Exploring ChatGPT: A Daily Essential
• 5:35 Claude by Anthropic: The Writing Assistant
• 9:42 Canva: Design Made Easy with AI
• 11:27 Riverside: Elevating Podcasting Quality
• 13:49 Summary

Transcript

0:00

Hey folks, welcome back to another episode of Your AI Roadmap. I'm your host, Joan Palmiter Bajorek and I'm excited today to talk to you about AI tools. Yes, different tools that have AI incorporated or otherwise that really move the needle for me and my team. And maybe these are obvious, but I think what we all need to be doing is figuring out how these different tools can help us. I think some people are like, this is just a gimmick or this is a game. Is this really helpful? So today I'm going to talk to you about the four AI tools that I use. I'd say three of them I use on a daily basis and all four I use on a monthly basis or my team uses on a weekly basis. I'm going to tell you how much they cost, what we use them for and how this might be applicable to you. Yeah, let's jump into it. So the first tool that I want to talk to you about today is ChatGPT OpenAI's product. Yeah, we use ChatGPT all the time, mostly as related to data entry and reformatting. So I don't know about you, I get tons of different information. Let's say it's about an event or it's about some customer work or something, and it's not formatted correctly. There is something up where we need to transpose something, you we have this data set and we got this data set, so we've got like, people who went to this event and got their emails on another spreadsheet. There are all these different headers that need to be changed. And so what we do is we pay OpenAI, ChatGPT, we pay $22.07 per month to get the middle tier. We use model 4.0 and we ask it to summarize the data set. We ask different models. Let me open up my ChatGPT. So there's advanced reasoning. 4.0 is when we use most, ChatGPT 4.0, which works fast. It can work with lots of different data sets. For quick analysis, 4.1, like there are different models, different tools within ChatGPT that we use. We use the middle tier, the pro tier, because it has more access. The free tier we find, Continuum has roadblocks. And we also choose to do data sharing off. Something I like to talk to people about. If you're using ChatGPT for free, you're also giving the data that you get put into it. So if you go into settings, data control, and it says improve the model for everyone, and you toggle it off, or at least that's what you do in May 2025 to not share your data with everybody else. So that's ChatGPT. That's the pro tier that we use. It saves us hours per day. hours per day for $22.07 US dollars per month. Okay? So that's one of the tools that we use regularly. It has lots of different features, but especially for tables, spreadsheets, that is our go-to chat GPT. The second tool we use all the time that I use daily and I'm really, really thrilled with is called Anthropic. And... Anthropic is the parent company just like OpenAI and their product that's comparable to ChatGPT but better in many ways is called Claude. C-L-A-U-D-E Claude. And Claude is a writing assistant for me. Claude is fantastic. So for example, I will let you all know that I am applying for a TED Talk, but I applied to lots of different things and you need a different copy. So for the application, I am drafting different things and I put in copy. like I think for Anthropic, for using Claude, which is a large language model, it's just really good at writing copy. Compared to ChatGPT night and day better. It's like hiring a sixth grader versus hiring a PhD to help you with your writing work. Yeah. So when I was writing it, I said, okay, here's the narrative of the story I want. I want it in the format of a TED talk, some pausing, some emphasis. Here's what I want to say, give me a draft. And Claude writes out this beautiful draft. I take it, I put it into Google Docs, I reformat it, I change things, I, ooh, that's not quite right, that doesn't sound like me, or I want to emphasize this, and I go back and forth and back and forth. And as of today, I think it gives you maybe five to 10 different prompts for free daily, so I will tell you. I use Claude's sonnet for most of the time and I don't pay anything today. I make sure that I use the prompts or the number of requests that I use with Claude very very efficiently. I pay zero dollars today for one of the best tools that I use. Now my guess is you know I'll need to eventually pay something to use Claude but wow if you are writing an application, if you are in college and you need support with essays, if you just have a roadblock and you need support. Claude is top tier today. It's funny, I like, I've been using ChatGPT PT a bunch and one of my friends, Hugh, shout out Hugh if you're listening to this, was like, Joan, you have to check in at Thropic. Claude is killing it. And I was like, oh my gosh. And he just kept talking about it. And I was like, okay, fine, I will try it, darn it. And I was like, oh wow, I maybe have been missing out. Because, well, ChatGPT PT is really good for things, fixing tables and stuff, the writing capabilities and the narrative quality of Chetch UPT does not compare to what Claude is putting forward. So if you haven't tried it, it's free, make an account. One of the things that Anthropic is also really good about is guardrails. So they're being used for lot of enterprise things, enterprise contexts and projects, because they have really good guardrails about it not saying the wrong thing, being harmful, Anthropic. Does a really good job with that as of today. So we've got chat gbt We've got entropic the third tool the third AI tool that I use on the regular is Canva now you may say Canva. That's the design tool That's that's the one that has pretty images. And yes, it has pretty images Canva and their generative AI suite is building out tons and tons of tools that make my team my life Run more smoothly. So if chat gbt Cost $22.07. Anthropic, I'm paying $0. Canva today, we use it and it costs $12.99 US dollars. Okay, what do we do in Canva? So we make presentations. One of the cool things about Chat Sheet BT and other tools is that there are limitations. With Canva, you can do all the things, so many things. And especially with design and the quality of the designs, look professional. Right? DALLE, what ChatGPT GPT is putting out, they look gimmicky. If you say, like, make me an image that looks like this, it's not something that I would show to a customer. Canva on the other hand is putting out beautiful professional images, text and so forth. So I can have an image, I can start making videos and I can click resize. So sometimes have you made it something for maybe Instagram and it's one aspect ratio like a one by one but then you want to put it on LinkedIn DIN and you need a three by four ratio or whatever pixel changes. Usually you'd have to pay a designer to like actually reformat it all. In Canva you can press resize. is one of their amazing capabilities for their gener of AI suite. Let me open it to see as of today what exactly it can do because it's so cool. So you click an image, you hit edit, and here are some of the things in their quote, magic studio, background mover. You press the button and it removes the background, whatever it thinks is the background. It may be right, it may be wrong, but have you definitely, like for example, if you have a headshot and you want to remove the background of the trees behind you in the image, You can just press this button. You don't have to outline anything. You just press the button, background remover. There's background generator. So if you have that headshot, you're moved, the tree's behind you, and you want to put in a cityscape, voila, the background generator can do that for you. It's not very good today, but it's doing something. Just the background remover, $12.99, that saves me and my team a chunk of time for different projects. So just that is worth it enough. There's the magic eraser. So can toggle around and erase different things from the image. There's magic grab, where you can define something that you want to move around. So let's say on the image there's a dog and you want to move the dog from the right side of the frame to the left side of the frame. Well, magic grab, you can grab that dog in the image, obviously, and drag it over. Grab text, you can bring an image into Canva and grab just the text of it. and potentially modify it or move it around. Magic Edit, they show an image of someone holding a rose and then you change that the person is not holding a rose but they're holding some daisies. Yeah, so we can change things. And one of my favorite new ones is called Magic Expand. So for example, someone gave me a headshot for a project I'm doing and I actually need an aspect ratio that shows their shoulders. Right, have you seen a headshot that is like really, really zoomed in, you just most likely down to their chin? I needed some shoulders and the person was wearing this shirt. Well, I do magic expand and I move out that aspect ratio and it just extrapolates the shirt they're wearing across arms. Yeah? So these type of AI, generative AI tools within the canvas, quote, magic suite saves me hours of menial moving around. And know, Canva was always designed for designer tools for non-designers and people like me who can both hire designers, but also use it myself to get things across the line that my customers love. My customers think are, I mean, they're professional class. So doing that really, really easily and effectively with a good user experience. That is tool number three, Canva coming in at $12.99 per month. And the last one I use... that I use all the time is actually the tool I'm using right now to record this podcast episode. It's called Riverside. Riverside is a podcasting and video and audio tool. It's getting better by the minute. I don't know if you've noticed, but across platforms on social media and for professional things, you need more video and audio. My customers for pre-sales have been requiring or requesting demo videos that have voiceover. that I literally walk the customer through something we might build for them, some explanation of the architecture, pain points, and blah, blah, that they record. like, for example, there's a huge pitch meeting going on really soon. And my team and I made a four-minute video to share with the customer that we used my speech. I did a voiceover explaining this in rooms I'm not in. Yeah? So the usage of audio and video, I know I'm not on video right now, but Riverside does an excellent quality of this. It runs on Chrome. It also can run on my phone, so I can take it with me if I need to do something. But just the quality of the editing, you can remove gaps. I know it's not perfect, I didn't say it was perfect, but they do magic clips. They're really building out how we use it. And in this context, maybe you wanna use Riverside, that's cool. Mostly though, I want you to think about other AI tools. that specifically match your projects. Because there are going to be ones where you say, hey, Joan, these tools matter a little bit, but there's one specifically for the finance sector, for the HR sector, for the dairy sector. Whatever it is, there are probably AI tools specific to your industry that I'm not mentioning, but will be core components of what you want to use today and into the future. So Riverside is a really cool tool. It has editing within it for that podcasting, for that video and audio material. So after I record this, I can use what Riverside calls the AI producer. The AI producer can remove pauses. I click a button and it will remove pauses. It will remove filler words, all the ums and uhs. It can quote, find fluff, recommend parts to cut. It has magic audio enhancements. So it'll try to make it sound even more nice production quality audio. It has smart mute. So if there are multiple people on this recording, they can mute people. mean, all these different things, each one of them is getting better and better to make production quality nicer for someone who doesn't have a production studio yet. I just had my office and sometimes I take you all on walks and record on walks when I'm thinking about things and that you all might be interested in. But mostly this ability to record something, get it in a really nice quality, send it out. that is democratizing the potential to have a podcast and start it on the ground and have reasonably good quality. So that AI producer is a part of Riverside's editing suite that they're currently building out today. Is it Adobe Pro, whatever? No, it's not. But it's kind of that Canva for podcasts, if you think about it that way. Today, my team, that's the most expensive one, Riverside, cost $29 per month. So, ChatGPT, $22.07. Anthropic, I pay $0 today. Canva, $12.99. That gets you the Magic Studio, if you wanna get those features. And then Riverside coming in at $29 is a total of $64.06 for a month of usage. Pretty incredible. So each of these tools I've told you has individually saved me hours and hours and hours of time and work per day, let alone per month. So these are efficiency tools. These are literally helping me sell more product and how we think about revenue boosting. these tools can make efficient, boring, menial stuff to grow the business, grow my impact for customers, produce amazing podcast episodes for you all internationally at the price point of $64.06, which would be just a few hours of someone's time. I don't even know who I could get to do all these things for just $64.06. So when we think about AIs, AI tools and AI, I really want you to think about how it can help you and enable you to do the things you want to do. Another piece of pushback that I've been hearing more and more, which is really a great and important thing to talk about, i believe that these These tools can help democratize the ability to make money and to future proof our businesses and so forth. And I really, I think it's worth it. Let's do a review again. The four tools that I use all the time. OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic, Claude's Anthropic. Number three, Canva, specifically their Magic Studio. And number four, Riverside, that audio and video podcasting tool that does really high quality audio. as compared to the ones we benchmarked. Wow, the audio is just so much better. And they're editing tools to get it out to you efficiently. Cool. Well, I hope you enjoyed this. Try them out. Let me know what you think. And look forward to seeing you on another episode of Your AI Roadmap. Have a wonderful rest of your day. Cheers.