Dan Martell - December 01, 2023


How CEOs Manage Their Inbox


Episode Stats


Length

9 minutes

Words per minute

203.20522

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).
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.