Introduction to Isabelle Dervaux

Damien Schreurs: Hello, hello. Today I have the pleasure of introducing Isabelle Dervaux.
Isabelle is a family photo curator who teaches her clients how to organize photos in Apple Photos, reduce visual clutter, and think like a pro while shooting. She guides them through selecting their most meaningful photos and shaping them into a narrative that uniquely tells their family’s story.
Her approach and insightful observations of photo-taking and sharing habits have led to interviews and profiles in Real Simple, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, The Times of London, and the BBC. Isabelle is originally from Valenciennes, France, and now lives in New York City with her American husband.
Isabelle, welcome to the show.

Isabelle Dervaux: Hello, bonjour.

Damien Schreurs: It’s funny because we spoke in French during the pre-show and pre-interview, and now we switch to English.

Isabelle Dervaux: Let’s do it.

Damien Schreurs: So, let’s dive into the main topic of the show.

Isabelle’s Current Mac Setup

Damien Schreurs: What is your current Mac setup?

Isabelle Dervaux: Right now, I’m sitting in front of my M1 MacBook. What else do you want to know? I have an iPhone 15—I don’t need to have an iPhone 16, but that’s good enough.

Damien Schreurs: And yeah. I noticed you’re using your main laptop screen. Do you ever plug your MacBook into an external monitor?

Isabelle Dervaux: I thought about this while on a Zoom call. Sometimes it’s best to have both, but sometimes it’s confusing. There is a monitor that my husband is not using, and maybe I should plug it in to explore more possibilities, but I need to decide.

Damien Schreurs: Yeah, but how often do you actually use it in a mobile way? Do you often travel with the MacBook?

Isabelle Dervaux: I take my MacBook sometimes to meet clients, but mostly I leave it at home. This MacBook is actually heavy, and when I changed laptops, I noticed that although it’s a little bit bigger, it’s heavy in my backpack. I often think, “Hmm, you know,” and I use my phone. Now I have a bigger phone and use it for tasks like taking notes. The notes sync to my computer, and that kind of works well.

Damien Schreurs: Yeah, that’s nice. When we are fully in the Apple ecosystem, we can open apps almost from any device, and everything synchronizes pretty well.

Favorite Applications and Tools

Damien Schreurs: So, on your Mac, which applications do you use the most for your business?

Isabelle Dervaux: Okay, so I’ve put my Dock on the right side, and I just go and check what I’m looking at. I have, of course, Finder on top, my Calendar, and Photos—I use that all the time. It’s placed just below Safari. Right now, I’m on Chrome, but I also use a non-Apple app, which is Grammarly. For some reason, I use Grammarly for anything and everything. They now have Grammarly Desktop, which I like because I use it everywhere. I use Keynote a lot for presentations, Pages frequently, and Notes—and it just goes in and fixes everything in my notes. I love it. Previously, it was only on the web, and that was really annoying, so I’m happy about the upgrade. That’s pretty much the best app I’m using right now.

Damien Schreurs: Do you have a paid Grammarly account?

Isabelle Dervaux: I do. I’m sure there is an upgrade because now they have more with artificial intelligence. I always get emails prompting me to upgrade, but I’m happy with what I have now.

Damien Schreurs: Yeah, I tried using the native Grammarly app, but then I stopped because it was a bit too annoying for me, and I’m still on the free plan. I’m always frustrated because it reminds me that I need to wait one more day before I can use it. For me, Grammarly is the OG AI grammar and spelling corrector from before AI became a big thing.

Isabelle Dervaux: Right? I mean, I remember using it on social media, and I always made mistakes, like forgetting apostrophes or mixing up adverbs. I love it now, but sometimes it suggests changes that I just don’t accept. You have to be careful.

Damien Schreurs: Yeah, that’s one of my small complaints with Grammarly. It doesn’t seem to learn my writing style; it always wants to rewrite.

Isabelle Dervaux: Yes, and then there’s the dictionary. It doesn’t work the way I want it to—for example, when I teach people about Apple Photos on a Mac, I use Smart Albums a lot, but it sometimes suggests “brilliant album,” which drives me crazy.

Damien Schreurs: Yes.

AI in Isabelle’s Workflow

Damien Schreurs: Since we’re already talking a bit about AI—with this new season I have a new segment, the AI segment—which AI systems, applications, or web services are you using now in your business?

Isabelle Dervaux: Okay. So, I’m about to go on a big rant, but I’ll stop myself. I have Perplexity on my tablet—I haven’t really played with it—and I have played with ChatGPT. I love using it to come up with catchy titles for a class, and I usually get good choices. I would not use it to create content because that often turns out horrible, and the same goes for creating images. I was an illustrator for 30 years, and AI-generated images are terrible. I could also rant about taking copyright away from people by using everything freely, but that’s not okay. Let’s get back to how I use it: I use it to rewrite something I’ve written when I need a slight change in tone—maybe a friendlier tone. Sometimes, for an Instagram post, it even adds emojis I would never have thought of. That’s kind of fun. I don’t use it all the time because I always keep in mind that AI costs a lot of energy and water. If everybody uses AI extensively, that could be terrible. So, I’m a little hesitant and use it sparingly. I also used it with Apple Photos to clean up images—for instance, to remove a piece of litter from the background of a great photo. But I wouldn’t rely on it for major edits. Let’s move on to Lightroom, then.

Damien Schreurs: Yeah, that was my next question: How much of Apple’s intelligence features are you using, whether on your Mac or on your phone? In Europe, these features just arrived with version 18.4 of iOS and 15.4 of macOS—or so I’ve heard. I think some language options might be exclusive to French for France or French-speaking Belgium. I haven’t tested it for Luxembourg yet. But let’s go back, since Apple Intelligence features have been around for a while for you.

Isabelle Dervaux: Hmm, right. So I’ve tried it. You can disable it if it doesn’t work for you, but I have it on, and it works much better. For example, it works for email on your phone: it puts a little picture if it’s your friend’s picture, so you see more context. It will summarize your email content—sometimes it gets it wrong, of course—but it also prompts you in text, much like Meta does on Instagram, nudging you to answer something or schedule an appointment by suggesting times like “Oh, three o’clock is great,” which you can click to save time. People have fun with it because you can set up multiple emojis and even create your own. For instance, there’s no jam emoji, so I made one. You can also take a picture, and it will find an image and create an AI-generated version of you. I did that for my entire family, and then it kind of stops. Apple Intelligence is great, though somewhat limited. If it cannot answer your request, it will defer to ChatGPT. I haven’t used it much recently after trying it initially.

Damien Schreurs: And for ChatGPT, I understand that you can use it via Apple Intelligence with a free account, but you can also configure your own account. What did you do on that front?

Isabelle Dervaux: I have an account, and it just pulls an answer. It’s been a while since I used it extensively, but it clearly indicates it’s ChatGPT before showing the answer.

Damien Schreurs: Just to be clear, we are recording this before the 2025 WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference), so I have no idea what new Apple Intelligence features will be released in iOS 19 and macOS 16. It’s possible this episode airs after that, so we’ll see.

Isabelle Dervaux: We’ll see. It always takes a little while before everyone gets the newest features. Not everyone has the latest iPhone 15 or 16, so I think it’s not a deal breaker if you don’t have Apple Intelligence on your phone.

Damien Schreurs: And so, do you have a paid ChatGPT account or a free one?

Isabelle Dervaux: I have a free one.

Damien Schreurs: What’s stopping you or why haven’t you made the leap to a paid account yet?

Isabelle Dervaux: Interesting question. I’m not sure because I feel like I don’t use it enough. I think I might need to spend more time training it to do things exactly the way I want. Honestly, I don’t have the need for it because I want my content to be in my own voice. Grammarly is enough for constructing sentences in a way that works for me. I’m not sure how I’d use it further—I’ve got to think about that.

Damien Schreurs: Yeah, I’ve had a paid Plus account—not the Pro, the Plus—which is the middle tier. What keeps me paying is the custom GPT features and the project feature.

Custom GPTs and Their Benefits

Damien Schreurs: But have you heard about custom GPTs?

Isabelle Dervaux: No, why don’t you tell me about them? Because I—

Damien Schreurs: Yeah, a custom GPT is like having a personalized assistant. You can create a personalized assistant with custom instructions that dictate how the GPT should behave. You can also provide reference material—documents, images, PDFs, text files. You can toggle on or off certain capabilities, like generating images, writing code, or searching the web. The first custom GPT I created was for content creation for my newsletter. I set a custom instruction requesting that it write in a specific tone and style, and I fed it two years’ worth of my pre-AI newsletter writing. It knows exactly how I write, the topics I cover, and my style—usually using bulleted lists and a casual tone. When I started using that assistant, I was curating articles by asking another GPT to summarize them. Those initial summaries were not in my voice at all, but then I would feed three or four paragraphs of AI-generated summaries into my custom GPT, and it would rewrite the content in my voice.

Isabelle Dervaux: In the way you write.

Damien Schreurs: Exactly. I almost never touched it—maybe I switched a few words or changed the phrasing a little bit—but it was very close to how I would write. 

Isabelle Dervaux: So that saved you time and effort in writing.

Damien Schreurs: Exactly. When I started, I was writing in both French and English and then translating. It used to take me five hours to produce content in both languages. I eventually stopped doing the French translation manually and just provided a Google Translate URL to my French list, which saved me about an hour. Then I started using ChatGPT. With ChatGPT handling both rewriting in my voice and translating, it took me on average three and a half hours. It ended up being faster to produce content in two languages with ChatGPT than one language without it. Recently, I’ve been using it more for strategic thinking. I discovered the concept of a co-CEO from Paul Roetzer’s popular AI podcast. Essentially, it’s a personalized GPT that acts as an assistant to the CEO. I built a co-CEO GPT to help me prepare for strategic discussions, and now my co-CEO helps me expand into the US to offer remote training services. We have already selected a few US states that, from a tax perspective, are ideal to start with.

Isabelle Dervaux: I see. Wow.

Damien Schreurs: Earlier in our recording today, I created a co-CFO (Chief Financial Officer) and a co-CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) as well. Something I discovered last week is that once you have these GPTs within a ChatGPT conversation thread, you can start a conversation with ChatGPT as usual but then type the at symbol (@) followed by the name of your GPT. Suddenly, that GPT uses the context from the conversation. I was able to have a three-way conversation with my co-CEO and co-CFO about a document generated with Deep Research (which doesn’t use any GPT at all). I thought, “Wow.” I’m even considering expanding and marketing that concept now because I’ve created a GPT builder—a C-suite builder—that can create not only a CEO but also a CTO, CFO, CMO, CIO, and CISO. It can generate up to 15 positions in the C-suite of a company.

Isabelle Dervaux: You’re getting very big.

Damien Schreurs: Yeah, that’s the main reason I continue paying for ChatGPT. In some instances, I’m even thinking of moving to the Pro version because I realized they cap how much I can use the most powerful version (ChatGPT 4.5) at the time of recording—I only get maybe 10 prompts per day.

Isabelle Dervaux: Yeah, you should go for it.

Damien Schreurs: Very good.

Mac Tips and Tricks

Damien Schreurs: Let’s move to the next segment of the show, which is the “Haha moment.” What tip or trick have you discovered recently on your Mac that you wish you had known before?

Isabelle Dervaux: Um, okay. I realized that I never really use the function keys much. There’s one simple trick: if you want to move to the top of a page or to the bottom, use the function key combined with the arrow key on the bottom-right of your keyboard. The function-arrow combination will take you to the top, and the opposite combination takes you to the bottom. Sometimes I get confused, but when I have photos where I need to go back quickly instead of scrolling up, I just do that. It’s also great for navigating a long document. I even give my clients a one-sheet of keyboard shortcuts for Apple Photos—once they learn it, they’re so much faster. I also discovered in Notes that you can use headings and subheadings to collapse parts of the text, which I love. I got that tip from YouTube.

Damien Schreurs: Yeah, I’m not yet on Sequoia, so I don’t have collapsible sections, but the keyboard shortcuts for titles and headings are very handy. For the title, it’s Shift+Command+T; for a heading, Shift+Command+H; and for a subheading, Shift+Command+J. I always use these three shortcuts to quickly create headers, headings, and subheadings. But go ahead.

Isabelle Dervaux: Sorry. This really helps with your thinking because you get a visual sheet that shows what’s important and what needs to be prioritized. It helps organize the page of information.

Damien Schreurs: Yeah. I use Notes for all my standard operating procedures—everything I do in my business or for the podcast is documented. I rely heavily on headings and subheadings. I also use the built-in checklist feature in Apple Notes.

Isabelle Dervaux: Oh, I love that—with the little bubbles.

Damien Schreurs: Yes. But I immediately turned off the feature where completed items automatically reorder and push to the bottom.

Isabelle Dervaux: You can turn that off—I didn’t know.

Damien Schreurs: Yes, you simply go to Settings (Command + Comma in Notes) and disable the option that says “Automatically sort ticked items.” Turn that off. Another keyboard shortcut I really love for checklists—when editing or publishing the podcast, I don’t need to refer back to the procedure because I know exactly what to do. I sometimes select multiple checklist items with the mouse and press Shift+Command+U to tick or untick them all at once.

Isabelle Dervaux: Ah, yeah. I feel like three-key commands can be hard for people since many are used to just a two-key combination. But once you get used to them, you move on to three-key shortcuts.

Damien Schreurs: Yeah, most of the keyboard shortcuts in Notes actually use Shift+Command.

Isabelle Dervaux: You’re right. Yes.

Damien Schreurs: Very good. Now, we’re almost at the end of the show. If you were in charge of the Mac division at Apple, what would be your first priority—whether it’s hardware or software?

Enhancing Apple Photos

Isabelle Dervaux: Okay, I’m going to talk about Photos. I wish they had an automatic album on your phone or computer that finds all the blurry photos. This should be easy to implement because I used to use an app called Gemini, which is now known as Clean My Phone. It automatically creates an album of all the blurry photos. Sometimes, people have “pocket photos” of things, and in just five minutes you can go and delete them. It’s great because nobody has time to go through and delete all the blurry photos from the past five years. I think this feature would be brilliant if it were integrated into the Apple Photos app. Of course, a single blurry photo could be extraordinary, but generally, these happen frequently. Now, with iOS 18, you have an automatic album for receipts, documents, illustrations, and another one I forgot, which I love. It’s nicely integrated under Utilities. I believe this is an easy addition Apple could implement.

Damien Schreurs: Oh yeah, that’s a good one. I never thought about it. I’m already happy with iOS 18 that I can filter out screenshots.

Isabelle Dervaux: I love it. There are so many screenshots that when I try to show pictures to my family, we have to scroll through dozens of them—and that’s not good.

Damien Schreurs: Exactly. It’s much nicer to view your photos without all the clutter. And if you want to focus on screenshots, you can add them to a pinned collection or filter by media type. Now, with the latest update in Utilities, you can move any category to the top.

Isabelle Dervaux: Yes. In iOS 18, instead of having four fixed tabs, you now have one long tab with everything, and you can customize and reorder whatever appears in your feed on the main view. Down at the bottom, you can remove items you don’t want to see—if you’re happy with your wallpaper, for example—and customize the suggestions. You can also change your pinned collection and make it personal, using specific albums you want immediate access to. Essentially, you can choose which three pinned collections appear—ones you always need—and if you go to Utilities, you can move anything you want to the top. When you turn on your phone, you see exactly what you want. Just press Edit in the top right corner and move items around. I think it’s brilliant. Most people just stick with the default and never bother to personalize it, but if you spend five minutes reordering things the way you want, you’ll be fine.

Damien Schreurs: I’ll look into that after the recording because my iPhone is recording the video version, so I’ll check it out later.

Isabelle Dervaux: Spend five minutes and reorder it the way you want, and you’ll be happy.

Damien Schreurs: Very good. Thank you very much—that’s super helpful. So, thank you, Isabelle, for coming on the show.

Conclusion and Where to Find Isabelle

Damien Schreurs: Where can people find you online?

Isabelle Dervaux: Thank you, Damien, for having me. I post on Instagram and write a bit more on LinkedIn—that’s where you can find me. Also, my website is isabelledervaux.com.

Damien Schreurs: I will put a link in the show notes to all your social profiles and your website. Again, thank you for being on the show.

Isabelle Dervaux: Thank you, Damien. It was fun, and I’ll be sure to sign up for your newsletter because I don’t have it yet—that’s my next step.

Applying to be a guest too

Damien Schreurs: Very good. And if, like Isabelle, you would like to share how you are using your Mac to run your solopreneur 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 out the application form and I will get back to you within a few days. Once again, that’s macpreneur.com/apply.

Outro

If you found this episode helpful, please share it with your fellow entrepreneurs and tag both Isabelle and me on Instagram. Isabelle’s handle is @FamilyPhotoCurator, and I am @macpreneurfm.

Until next time, I’m Damien Schreurs, wishing you a great day.