Dan Martell - December 01, 2023


How CEOs Manage Their Inbox

Hosted by
Dan Martell
Mentioned
Richard Branson Helen
People don’t go on car lots just to look. Give to the World What You Want to Get

Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

203.21

Word count

1,847

Sentence count

118


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

If you have hundreds of unread emails in your inbox right now, there's just no way you're going to become the top 1% performer in your industry. When I was building my company Clarity, I had the privilege of being invited to spend a week with Richard Branson at his house in Verbier, Switzerland. I went there for one reason: to see how the billionaire that every other billionaire wants to be like operates in his day-to-day life.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 The top 1% make millions a year without ever checking their email.
00:00:04.080 They don't worry about unread emails like you do because they follow these five specific
00:00:08.560 principles that anyone can use, whether you're a student or working nine to five,
00:00:12.680 or running your own business, to go from inbox overwhelmed to no inbox at all.
00:00:17.720 Number one is clone yourself. If you have hundreds of unread emails in your inbox right now,
00:00:23.140 there's just no way you're going to become the top 1% performer in your industry.
00:00:27.860 When I was building my company Clarity, I had the privilege of being invited to spend a week
00:00:32.620 with Richard Branson at his house in Verbier, Switzerland. I went there for one reason,
00:00:36.700 to see how the billionaire that every other billionaire wants to be like operates in his
00:00:41.380 day-to-day life. The answer? Before putting on his skis and bombing down the hill with us,
00:00:46.160 he sat down with his assistant, Helen, and she brought to him only the things she didn't know
00:00:51.460 how to deal with. Everyone asking for Branson's time had to go through Helen,
00:00:55.580 and she took care of almost all requests.
00:00:58.460 So here's the core philosophy.
00:00:59.740 You don't hire to add capacity.
00:01:01.840 You hire to buy back your time.
00:01:03.700 In my book, Buy Back Your Time,
00:01:05.380 I have this thing called the replacement ladder.
00:01:09.500 It shows the sequence of hiring you should make
00:01:12.360 in the order and what they take off of your plate
00:01:15.160 to get the most time.
00:01:16.320 But this video is only focused on the first rung.
00:01:20.120 The key is to find the yin to your yang.
00:01:22.800 You wanna find somebody that is your opposite.
00:01:24.820 it. Someone who can take all those crazy open loops, grab them and close them so you can keep
00:01:30.560 running as fast as you want and growing your business. Number two is the no-go zone. I remember
00:01:37.000 a long time ago, my brother hired an executive assistant and I was asking him like, dude,
00:01:41.120 how's it going? And he's like, I don't really see what the point is. I mean, they're great,
00:01:45.820 they're helping me out, but it's not transforming my life the way you've been talking about it.
00:01:49.780 I knew immediately when he shared that feedback that the issue was that he had not given up.
00:01:54.820 control of his inbox. Instead of delegating his inbox, he was CC-ing his assistant on those emails.
00:02:02.340 Newsflash, your inbox is not your boss. Make a rule for yourself. I am no longer ever, ever allowed
00:02:09.680 to touch an email that my assistant hasn't processed. I know what you're thinking. I can't
00:02:14.320 give over all of that control. Don't think of this as losing power, but as gaining control of your
00:02:20.280 time. To give up the keys to your inbox, you need a system that routes every email exactly where it
00:02:25.980 needs to go. And this next step will help you. Number three is email GPS. This folder structure
00:02:32.440 will help your assistant route 90% of your email without you getting involved. The first one is
00:02:38.520 your name. This is essentially a folder or a label where your assistant will put emails in your inbox
00:02:45.460 for you to process.
00:02:47.220 These might be personal things you've asked them.
00:02:49.000 The second folder is super important is the review.
00:02:52.180 It's where my assistant will put things
00:02:53.920 that we need to discuss on our daily meeting,
00:02:56.380 more on that in a bit,
00:02:57.720 so that I never feel like they're making decisions
00:03:00.780 without my involvement.
00:03:02.320 The third area is to respond.
00:03:05.360 If something goes in my inbox and I'm like,
00:03:07.380 oh no, no, I want my assistant to process that,
00:03:09.180 I just put to respond.
00:03:10.760 It gets put in their to-do list.
00:03:12.500 It's a very lightweight way for me to give a to-do to my assistant
00:03:16.320 without ever having to get them on a phone.
00:03:18.480 The fourth is responded.
00:03:20.140 This one is where I can go check.
00:03:22.360 Anytime my assistant responds on my behalf,
00:03:25.060 they tag that email as responded.
00:03:27.480 Easy way for me to review how they've responded to things.
00:03:30.080 Number five is waiting on.
00:03:32.200 This is a great place to put emails
00:03:34.600 where we've sent a message to somebody
00:03:36.160 and we're waiting on them to get back to us.
00:03:38.700 The sixth is financial.
00:03:41.120 All of my daily cash reporting, financial receipts,
00:03:44.240 transactions, anything financially related
00:03:46.660 goes into this label.
00:03:48.440 So I always know there's one spot where I can go look.
00:03:50.780 And number seven is newsletters.
00:03:53.220 Take anything that doesn't require immediate attention,
00:03:55.780 put it in the newsletter folder.
00:03:57.000 And once a week, you have a calendar entry
00:03:58.860 where you sit down and you review those emails
00:04:01.360 so you don't get distracted on a day-to-day basis
00:04:03.900 to keep yourself moving forward.
00:04:06.000 So that's the overall folder structure.
00:04:08.220 But here's what you do with that review folder.
00:04:10.500 Number four is the daily admin review, and it is one of my favorite. To do it right,
00:04:17.260 you need to understand these five key areas. Just like Branson, you need to sit down with
00:04:22.280 your assistant once a day and review only the things that need your attention. The first item
00:04:28.020 is your list. This is a list I have on my phone. Anytime I have any ideas for my assistant,
00:04:33.720 I write it down, and the first prompt when I'm on the call with my assistant is what is on your
00:04:39.140 list. I never forget to review something I might have put there the day before or the morning of
00:04:43.680 so that it's always taken care of. Number two is the calendar review. Now here's what's different.
00:04:49.480 Most people don't do this. First off, if it's the beginning of the week, I review six weeks out. Any
00:04:54.660 conflicts, opportunities, synergy, things we have to clear out gets figured out. After that, we do
00:05:00.620 a two-week scan. The key is everything in the calendar has to be complete. If somebody's been
00:05:05.900 invited to the meeting, they've accepted the invite. If not, my assistant has to call to confirm
00:05:09.440 all the details for the meeting is in the description of the calendar invite so that
00:05:14.580 everything I need from a context point of view is right there. And that rhythm works great
00:05:18.740 for the calendar. The third is the review folder, my favorite folder in my email GPS system. These
00:05:25.640 are areas of learning or coaching or teaching that I can share with my assistant. Everything
00:05:32.140 from contracts that I might need to sign for investments
00:05:35.200 to people that have never gotten an email from before.
00:05:38.500 Is this somebody you know?
00:05:39.280 Did you meet them at an event?
00:05:40.260 And here's one of the tricks.
00:05:41.880 If I'm traveling for a little bit
00:05:43.300 and I wanna wake up in the morning
00:05:44.420 and feel super productive,
00:05:45.460 I'll just jump in that review folder
00:05:46.960 and just leave notes for my assistant as a draft
00:05:50.420 so that creates a feedback and a communication loop
00:05:52.900 so that they can oftentimes move those emails forward
00:05:56.260 without ever having to review them anymore.
00:05:59.180 Then we go to past meetings.
00:06:00.860 Sometimes I'll have 13, 15 meetings in a day.
00:06:04.520 And when I get on the call,
00:06:06.000 that agenda item is literally,
00:06:07.460 is there anything to follow up with this person?
00:06:08.880 Anything to follow up with this person?
00:06:09.860 So I never have to worry about closing the loops
00:06:12.200 that are open.
00:06:12.940 I know that I'll be prompted after the fact.
00:06:15.240 And then the last one, number five, is project updates.
00:06:18.720 And this is for me to get updates and feedback
00:06:20.780 on anything that are priorities or projects.
00:06:23.880 I always feel like I'm in the loop,
00:06:25.180 but I'm also supporting moving these projects forward.
00:06:28.280 Now, if you get through these five items really quick,
00:06:30.680 and there's some bonus time,
00:06:32.220 these are some questions I would invite you
00:06:34.440 to have your assistant ask you.
00:06:35.840 Number one is, how's your daily energy doing right now?
00:06:38.920 Based on your calendar, how you feel?
00:06:40.660 At the end of the day, are you feeling depleted?
00:06:42.260 Are you feeling good?
00:06:43.160 Do you feel like the workload's good?
00:06:44.740 Number two, what frustrations do you have
00:06:46.640 in your life right now?
00:06:47.980 To me, this is a beautiful question to be asked
00:06:50.020 because that'll allow me to scan and go like,
00:06:52.100 you know what, this area or this person
00:06:53.860 or this situation doesn't feel great.
00:06:55.740 Can we maybe clean it up?
00:06:57.240 And then the third one, is there anything
00:06:58.640 that we can change to make this easier for you.
00:07:01.760 If you just ask yourself that question
00:07:03.300 and give yourself permission to do that,
00:07:05.260 it would change everything for you.
00:07:07.100 So that's the admin review process.
00:07:09.560 So now the key is, is to take all of that
00:07:12.200 and to make sure that we do it in a way
00:07:14.480 where we don't feel like we're losing touch.
00:07:16.580 The last point is number five and it's closing the loop.
00:07:20.940 Here's a funny story.
00:07:22.320 A few months ago, I was at my friend's house
00:07:24.140 and he was telling me about an investment opportunity
00:07:26.240 and I was like, dude, I'm in.
00:07:28.640 Get your buddy to email me the paperwork.
00:07:31.140 I want to make this investment.
00:07:32.640 And then like three weeks later,
00:07:34.040 I remember I was on my road bike training for an Ironman.
00:07:36.540 And I go, whatever happened to that investment?
00:07:39.460 So I text my buddy and I was like,
00:07:40.660 hey, did you ever make that email intro?
00:07:42.500 And he's like, yeah, let me check with my friend.
00:07:44.620 And he checks with them and he says,
00:07:45.900 he said you passed.
00:07:47.680 And my heart sank because I knew what happened.
00:07:50.520 My assistant, based on our processes and protocols,
00:07:53.540 didn't have any context for this person.
00:07:55.420 It looked like an unsolicited investment.
00:07:57.260 And she used the templated response, letting the person know that we reviewed the information and we do not want to move forward, which was crazy embarrassing.
00:08:06.000 So I immediately got in my inbox and I replied and I said, sorry, sorry, sorry.
00:08:09.600 I would love to do the deal.
00:08:11.080 Now, this is what I change.
00:08:13.460 These are the four things that your assistant needs to close the loop on every day before they wrap up.
00:08:20.920 Number one is meetings scheduled.
00:08:24.100 I just need to know it got scheduled.
00:08:26.040 What's the date?
00:08:26.640 So in my mind, I start to put together
00:08:28.380 kind of a calendar context that's being created.
00:08:31.880 Number two is purchases.
00:08:34.120 If there was money spent,
00:08:35.280 I just wanna know what those purchases are.
00:08:37.700 Number three is project updates.
00:08:40.460 So if there's big, meaningful work that's being managed,
00:08:43.180 it could be legal stuff, financial stuff,
00:08:45.200 just make sure that they also include
00:08:46.800 some updates on the projects.
00:08:48.440 And number four is decisions made.
00:08:51.180 Just ask them, is there any big decisions you made
00:08:53.400 that I should know about so I can feel like I'm informed?
00:08:56.260 So that's how CEOs manage their inbox.
00:08:59.840 Now, if you wanna go even deeper
00:09:01.220 on how CEOs manage their day,
00:09:02.900 then click the video on the screen
00:09:04.200 and I'll see you on the other side.